Legendary songwriter Bob Dylan is being accused of plagiarising sections of his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech from a popular US study guide, SparkNotes.

According to Slate, the 76-year-old’s June 4 lecture (delivered just in time to claim the $A1.2 million prize money) borrows heavily from SparkNotes’ online guide to Moby-Dick.

Dylan referenced Herman Melville’s 1851 novel heavily in his speech, calling it a “fascinating book” and recounting its plot in detail and quoting from it liberally.

But blogger Ben Greenman noticed one of the quotes Dylan referenced in his lecture actually doesn’t appear in the book itself.

Dylan attributed the following line to a “Quaker pacifist priest”: “Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness.”

Despite his best efforts, Mr Greenman was unable to locate this quote in the original text.

“It appears, from all available evidence, that Dylan invented the quote and inserted it into his reading of Moby-Dick. Was it on purpose? Was it the result of a faulty memory? Was it an egg, left in the lawn to be discovered in case it’s Eastertime too?” he wrote.

“As it stands, it’s very much in the spirit of his entire enterprise: to take various American masterworks and absorb and transform them.”

Upon further inspection, Slate journalist Andrea Pitzer found the quote bore a striking resemblance to SparkNotes’ description of character Father Mapple, a man who, “is an example of someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness or revenge”.

And it didn’t end there – Dylan recounted how, in the book, “there’s a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels, and he predicts Ahab’s doom”.

SparkNotes’ version reads: “One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick.”

Slate estimates another 18 sentences from Dylan’s speech also bear a resemblance to SparkNotes’ guide. You can see the full list here.

Dylan was awarded the prize for literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

He skipped the December 2016 presentation ceremony and finally accepted it at a private ceremony in Stockholm in April this year.

Dylan’s win prompted outrage in the literary community, who felt the academy overlooked other worthy nominees – and women – in favour of a musician.

Other complaints included that Dylan borrowed widely from other sources in his music.

“[D]oes this mean we get to have a serious conversation about Dylan as appropriator and boundaries btw that and plagiarism?” novelist Hari Kunzru tweeted at the time.

“Is any previous Nobel laureate known to have incorporated so many other people’s words, unattributed, into his work?”

Dylan himself spoke of his fondness for literary references in the lecture.

“When I received the Nobel Prize for literature I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature … I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was,” Dylan said.

“I took all that [my reading] with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally.”

Listen to Dylan’s full lecture and decide for yourself.