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This work revolves round the analysis of Jack Kerouac's complex identity and his main artistic inspirations. Even though the writer was born in Lowell, MA, he was raised in a Franco-American family with strong bonds with the Quebec region. The resultant split identity led to deep existential doubts that Kerouac was never able to overcome. However, the awareness of his cultural dichotomy proved extremely important for his own work. Indeed, the Beat author was able to reach an original poetics which was inspired by both American and French writers. Despite Kerouac's innovative style and writing method, an analysis of the artists who influenced his work could help contextualize and better understand his literary and linguistic genius.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s name does not appear in any First Amendment treatise or casebook. And yet when the best-selling poet and proprietor of City Lights Books was indicted under California law for publishing and selling Allen Ginsberg’s poem, Howl, Ferglinghetti buttressed the tradition of dissident expression and ended an era when minds were still closed, candid literature still taboo, and when selling banned books was considered a crime. The People v. Ferlinghetti is the story of a rebellious poet, a revolutionary poem, an intrepid book publisher, and a bookseller unintimidated by federal or local officials. There is much color in that story: the bizarre twists of the trial, the swag...
By the time Lucien Carr stabbed David Kammerer to death on the banks of the Hudson River in August 1944, it was clear that the hard-partying teenage companion to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs might need to reevaluate his life. A two-year stint in a reformatory straightened out the wayward youth but did little to curb the wild ways of his friends. Mania tells the story of this remarkable group— who strained against the conformity of postwar America, who experimented with drink, drugs, sex, jazz, and literature, and who yearned to be heard, to remake art and society in their own libertine image. What is more remarkable than the manic lives they led is t...
The Beat Movement was one of the most radical and innovative literary and arts movements of the 20th century, and the history of the Beat Movement is still being written in the early years of the 21st century. Unlike other kinds of literary and artistic movements, the Beat Movement is self-perpetuating. After the 1950s generation, headlined by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, a new generation arose in the 1960s led by writers such as Diane Wakoski, Anne Waldman, and poets from the East Side Scene. In the 1970s and 1980s writers from the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and contributors to World magazine continued the movement. The 1980s and 1990s Language Movement...
Essays on authors whose lives span the twentieth century and serve as examples in the complex evolution of an immensely popular genre that has been greatly affected by market forces. Their careers and works reveal changing perspectives on crime and punishment in American society and culture.
Presents career biographies and criticism writers from Brazil. Also includes essays on tropicalismo, concrete poetry, and colonial literature.
Discusses the life and writings of American novelist and short-story writer John Steinbeck. Includes information on stage and screen adaptations of his works, critical assessments of his writing, and the Steinbeck centennial.
Embraces the work of writers working in theatrical traditions ranging from the classic well-made play to the most radical avant-garde pieces. This variety is indicative of the fact that this period is one of the most important in British drama, comparable to the late-Elizabethan/Jacobean and post-Restoration eras in terms of the quantity and quality of new work and surpassing both of them in the sheer variety of theatrical offerings.