The Twilight’s Last Gleaming: Dialogues and Debts in Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom

Bob Dylan’s song “Chimes of Freedom” marks a creative turning point in the evolution of his art. Dylan displays his debts to influential artists from Woody Guthrie to Allen Ginsberg, and he engages dialectically with iconic American artworks including “The New Colossus” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Dylan also works through his grief over the Kennedy assassination and wrestles with his increasingly complicated relationship with the American political Left. “Chimes of Freedom” is at once the high-water mark of Dylan’s achievement as a protest singer and his resignation letter as spokesperson for a political movement he had outgrown by 1964