Abstract: Bob Dylan and his rock and roll works are examples of "literary culture", and he is worthy of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. Different from ordinary popular music, Dylan's works belong to "imaginative culture", are a continuation of a profound idealistic tradition and carrier of ideological unrest. His works are actively engaged in social issues, and contemplate and interpret common concerns of the times, thus creating a poetic "literary culture" that nourish private life, safeguard free space, and realizes fairness and justice. Through empathy and imagination, they realize and enlarge "solidarity" and therefore create "new individuals", or individuals who are good at becoming humans. All this promotes modern social progress.

Key words: Bob Dylan, new sensibility, Richard Rorty, literary culture, "new individual"