The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation

ISBN-13: 9780809329496 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 232 str.

Gregory Stephenson

Opis

In these critical essays Gregory Stephenson takes the reader on a journey through the literature of the Beat Generation: a journey encompassing that common ethos of Beat literaturethe passage from darkness to light, from fragmented being toward wholeness, from Beat to Beatific. He travels through Jack Kerouac s Duluoz Legend, " "following Kerouac s quests for identity, community, and spiritual knowledge. He examines Allen Ginsberg s use of transcendence in Howl, discovers the Gnostic vision in William S. Burroughs s fiction, and studies the mythic, visionary power of Lawrence Ferlinghetti s poetry. Stephenson also provides detailed examinations of the writing of lesser-known Beat authors: John Clellon Holmes, Gregory Corso, Richard Farina, and Michael McClure. He explores the myth and the mystery of the literary legend of Neal Cassady. The book concludes with a look at the common traits of the Beat writerstheir use of primitivism, shamanism, myth and magic, spontaneity, and improvisation, all of which led them to a new idiom of consciousness and to the expansion of the parameters of American literature."