Transcript Lecture One - lynu.edu.cn

Allen Ginsberg
&
The Beat Generation
Beat Generation
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Beat writers (Beat Generation): A group of American poets and
novelists who were active and influential in the late 1950s.
Beat writers rejected the prevailing social mores.
Feeling oppressed by the dominant culture, they held and
publicly advocated anti-intellectual, anti-political, and, in
general, antiestablishment views.
Beat Generation
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Beat Generation applies to those who came of age just after
World War II and who revoked against the dominant political
and social culture of that complacent and materialistic era by
acting in various ways, like riding motor-cycles, smoking
marijuana.
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The Beat movement of the 1950s had considerable influence
on the 1960s and 1970s idea of counterculture.
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During this later era, the connotations of Beat expanded to
include the rebellious rhythms of rock ’n’ roll (The Beatles).
Beat Generation
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The character played by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause
(1955) typifies the feeling of oppression felt by the members of the
Beat Generation.
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More recently, "poetry slams”-- readings and recitations of
aggressive personal poetry on college campuses and in urban
coffeehouses and bars -- have signaled a revival of Beat poetry.
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Henry Rollins, former lead vocalist for the punk rock band Black
Flag, has figured significantly in this revival.
The origin of the term
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Jack Kerouac first used the term "Beat Generation" in his talk with
John Clellon Holmes (1926~1988) about the implications of the
Lost Generation and existentialism in 1948.
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Then The New York Times carried an article entitled "This Is the
Beat Generation" in 1952.
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The word "Beat" is originally a jazz term for rhythm. When it
applies to the Beats, it can mean beaten down, destroyed,
demolished. The Beats were beaten down
Emergence
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Many people associate the Beat Generation of the first half of the
1950s with crime, delinquency, immorality, and amorality.
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Even some professors and critics feel sorry that the high ideal of
the Beats became very degenerate in practice.
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Although the Beat Generation is all history now, it remains an
important chapter in American literature.
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The Beat Generation was a social phenomenon rather than an
artistic one. The great emphasis was on the way people lived, the
way the Beats lived. They also produced important literature, but
the rebellion in life style of these people was an important part of
the time..
Background
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The 1950s and early 1960s were in the social tradition of American
romantic revolt. American romantic revolt means the individual as
opposed to society.
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The basic trust was in the power of the individual, and anything that
was done by society as a group was down-graded.
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The Beats just wanted to drop out from society. They did not accept
any conventions or general rules because they believed that the
power should go to the individual.
Characteristics
1.
They denied the ready-made interpretation of human behavior,
and they were drawn to aspects of human experiences that were
ignored by all the sciences or condemned by society. They were
drawn to the idea of breaking control and getting out of one's
ordinary head, partly for joy, partly for the sake of new perception.
2.
The Beats rejected middle class values, commercialism, and
conformity. The Beats were interested in excessive experiences,
in the extreme, because they held that a man who puts himself
outside the law is a man who puts himself into himself.
Characteristics
3.
The Beats withdrew from politics and from the obligations of
citizenship. They gave up on the system completely and turned
inward to the individual life.
4.
The Beats rejected universities and the academic tradition.
5.
The Beats evolved a free, non-materialistic religion with no formal
church, but based loosely on the teaching of Buddha, comprising
love, gay, and anarchy.
6.
The Beats regarded modern American life as so cruel, selfish, and
impersonal that writers and artists were being driven to madness.
Representatives
Novelists: William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac.
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Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) is the best-known novel
produced by a Beat writer.
Poets: Allen Ginsberg,Gregory Corso, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti.
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Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl" (1956) is a central Beat achievement in
its breathless, chanted celebration of the down-and-out and
the subculture of drug addicts, social misfits, and compulsive
wanders.
Representatives
The following lines are taken from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl" :
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for
an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night....
A Supermarket in California
1.
2.
3.
All through the poem, the speaker is addressing to Walt
Whitman. Is this poem about Whitman or about modern
America?
If Whitman is alive today, do you think he would frequent the
supermarket? Why or why not?
What is speaker’s reaction to modern America?