“To Reign in Hell or Serve Somebody?”: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways in Dialogue

This article explores the dialogue between John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), examining how Dylan reimagines the world of Milton’s epic through art, lyrics and performance. Drawing on the dialogic theories of Bakhtin and Kristeva, together with the archetypal criticism of Jung and modern Jungian interpretations, the study investigates the persistence of Miltonic themes—including rebellion, exile, temptation, prophecy, and artistic and literary creation—within Dylan’s late work. Particular attention is dedicated to the figure of Satan as a symbol of fragmented artistic consciousness that finds its equivalent in Dylan’s devilish personae. By tracing the album’s engagement with the Miltonic epic, the article argues how Rough and Rowdy Ways transforms its inherited literary tradition into contemporary poetics of literary creation and authorship, historical memory and loss, and cultural and political disillusionment. Ultimately, this comparison demonstrates that the dialogue between Dylan and Milton is sustained through the vision that literature can only be understood as the transformation of other texts, bringing forth a new poetic tradition.