One can't know this, of course, but I imagine Dylan liked, first of all, the general resonance of the title, in which stolen hearts and emotional misdemeanors always stalk the sweetness of love, as they do in Dylan's songs. Check out this interview with Lott where he discusses all this: He never wore "blackface", but he did flirt with "whiteface" in 75-76. Dylan's always seen himself as a minstrel, a donner of personas, a mask within a mask within a mask. But Dylan's not merely alluding to the debt his music owes to that strain of Americana (among many others), even though this aknowledgment is probably the most directly self-reflexive of all his lyrics/titles. Dylan's implicitly referring to Eric Lott's book of the same name, an historical study of minstrelsy in American culture (of the "blackface" variety). And I hope that article notes that the title is "Love and Theft", very notably "in quotations". I haven't read the article Lee refers to (is there a link?), but I'm hardpressed to see how much of these lyrics could be derived from Japanese poetry. but only "Love and Theft" should be considered alongside Dylan's other masterworks IMO. Time out of Mind is a damn good record, the single Things Have Changed an embarrassingly cliched track.
I may be alone in this, but in my opinion "Love and Theft" is the only Dylan masterpiece of the last decade.
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