The reason why Bob Dylan's poetry is full of creativity is a kind of literary nature in his lyrics. This has become the deep-rooted object of literary research for quite a few scholars. In detail, on the one hand, Bob Dylan is deeply influenced by the social movement so that the lyrics reflect the close relationship with society; on the other hand, he is looking for a way to break through, develop and improve the language usage, applying various literary techniques into his lyrics.

This thesis consists of five parts.The first part mainly presents a brief introduction to Dylan's literature and his life background as well as the characteristics of music and literature of his poems. The second part is literature review, including studies of Dylan and his songs and poems at home and abroad on the basis of some theories put forward by different authors. The third part is about the analysis of interaction between music and literature from different perspectives. The fourth part is the most vital part in this thesis. It gives a detailed analysis on rhetoric approaches to realizing characteristics of music and literature in poems, respectively from the perspective of implicit and inclusive metaphors, rich and blurred images and the profound and creative allusion through some typical examples of Dylan’s poems. And the final part is conclusion, which consists of the major findings of this thesis and the tentative suggestions for future research of this kind.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies at Home

While studying the relationship between Bob Dylan's songs and creative expressions and literary origins, Zhao Pingping pointed out that Bob Dylan used literature to interpret life attitudes in his creative career(2016:82-84). The expression in Bob Dylan's song contains a series of profound philosophical thoughts which share a lot with literature creation. Based on this fact, people begin to have a new understanding of the relationship between music and literature.

In Fan Yuefen's view, Bob Dylan is a modern poet. He drew on the essence of romantic poetry in the 18th century and cleverly combined poetry and folk songs based on tradition for the first time. Fan Yuefen’s article attempts to analyze Bob Dylan's poetry from the perspective of Bob Dylan's folk poet and romantic poet(2016:134-136). Chang Jun stated that Bob Dylan is an incarnation of a writer and musician. When considering whether his identity meets literary figures, people can actually see that he reflects a strong academic temperament from the inside out(2017:12-15).Moreover, Wang Lifei held the view that for one example, Bob Dylan’s poetry mirrors a relatively strong social awareness. For the other, it constantly promotes the breakthroughs in language use and integrates various literary creation techniques into lyrics so as to achieve a high value of literary in lyrics(2013:56-58).

With the above related works combined, from the perspective of literature and music, one can further understand the interactivity of literature and music and enhance the appreciation ability of poetry by appreciating Bob Dylan's works. This will be helpful in understanding the genre of poetry correctly.