The Cambridge Companion to the BeatsSteven Belletto The Cambridge Companion to the Beats offers an in-depth overview of one of the most innovative and popular literary periods in America, the Beat era. The Beats were a literary and cultural phenomenon originating in New York City in the 1940s that reached worldwide significance. Although its most well-known figures are Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, the Beat movement radiates out to encompass a rich diversity of figures and texts that merit further study. Consummate innovators, the Beats had a profound effect not only on the direction of American literature, but also on models of socio-political critique that would become more widespread in the 1960s and beyond. Bringing together the most influential Beat scholars writing today, this Companion provides a comprehensive exploration of the Beat movement, asking critical questions about its associated figures and arguing for their importance to postwar American letters. |
Contents
The Beat HalfCentury | 1 |
Were Jack Kerouac Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs | 23 |
Beatniks Hippies Yippies Feminists and the Ongoing American | 36 |
Locating a Beat Aesthetic | 51 |
Allen Ginsberg and Beat Poetry | 77 |
Five Ways of Being Beat Circa 195859 | 92 |
Jack Kerouac and the Beat Novel | 110 |
Beating Postmodernism | 123 |
The Beats and Gender | 162 |
The Beats and Sexuality | 179 |
The Beats and Race | 193 |
On Beat Transnationalism | 209 |
Buddhism and the Beats | 225 |
Gregory Corsos Christian Poetics | 240 |
Jazz and the Beat Generation | 250 |
The Beats and Visual Culture | 265 |
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Common terms and phrases
African American Allen Ginsberg Angels Ann Charters Anne Waldman artists Baraka Beat aesthetic Beat literature Beat movement Beat novel Beat poetry Beat poets Beat scene Beat writers Beatnik Black bohemian Bremser Brenda Buddhism Burroughs’s Chapter City Lights counterculture critical cultural cut-up David Dharma Bums Diane Diane di Prima drug Duluoz Legend edited essay female Fiction film Gary Snyder gender Gregory Corso Herbert Huncke Hettie Jones hippies hipster Howl Introduction Jack Kerouac jazz Jennie Skerl John Clellon Holmes Journals Joyce Johnson Kupferberg Lamantia Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lenore Kandel LeRoi Jones literary mainstream male Michael McClure Micheline Naked Lunch narrative Neal Cassady Oliver Harris Penguin Philip Whalen poem poetics political postmodern postwar Prima’s published Queer readers Road Ronna San Francisco sexual social spiritual Spontaneous Prose Steven Belletto Surrealism Sutra Ted Joans tion tradition Transnational Beat Troia University Press Visions of Cody writing wrote York