Bob Dylan took his sweet time to deliver his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, but it looks like he did not put much effort into it, as the singer has now been accused of plagiarising his speech from SparkNotes, an online version of CliffsNotes.
Dylan discussed the books that had the biggest impact on him in his speech and Slate Magazine uncovered several similarities between the musician's speech and the entry on the site.
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For instance, Dylan quoted a passage from Moby-Dick, which does not appear in the current editions of Herman Melville's novel.
Check out the video of his speech below:
A few similarities between Dylan's description of Moby-Dick and the entries found on SparkNotes:
Dylan: "There's a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels, and he predicts Ahab's doom."
SparkNotes: "One of the ships ... carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom."Dylan: "Captain Boomer - he lost an arm to Moby. But... he's happy to have survived. He can't accept Ahab's lust for vengeance."
SparkNotes: "Captain Boomer has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick... Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahab's lust for vengeance."Dylan: "He calls Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment of evil."
SparkNotes: "He sees this whale as the embodiment of evil."
Interestingly, this isn't the first time Dylan has been accused of copying.
Besides being accused of copying from poet Henry Timrod, the musician is also said to have taken inspiration from Junichi Saga's book Confessions of a Yakuza for his 2001 album Love and Theft.
In June 2009, Christie's of New York auctioned one of his handwritten poems titled Little Buddy, which many believe is a rewrite of a Hank Snow song, also called Little Buddy.
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