Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature

Beat literature? Have not the great canonical names long grown familiar? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Likewise the frontline texts, still controversial in some quarters, assume their place in modern American literary history. On the Road serves as Homeric journey epic. "Howl" amounts to Beat anthem, confessional outcry against materialism and war. Naked Lunch, with its dark satiric laughter, envisions a dystopian world of power and word virus. But if these are all essentially America-centered, Beat has also had quite other literary exhalations and which invite far more than mere reception study. These are voices from across the Americas of Canada and Mexico, the Anglophone world of England, Scotland or Australia, the Europe of France or Italy and from the Mediterranean of Greece and the Maghreb,  and from Scandinavia and Russia, together with the Asia of Japan and China. This anthology of essays maps relevant other kinds of Beat voice, names, texts. The scope is hemispheric, Atlantic and Pacific, West and East. It gives recognition to the Beat inscribed in languages other than English and reflective of different cultural histories. Likewise the majority of contributors come from origins or affiliations beyond the US, whether in a different English or languages spanning Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, or Chinese. The aim is to recognize an enlarged Beat literary map, its creative internationalism.

List of contents

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments


Introduction


A. ROBERT LEE


PART I. Canada and Mexico

1 Canada Beats: A Complex Legacy


KATHARINE STREIP


2 The Beat Presence in Mexican Literature


ALBERTO ESCOBAR DE LA GARMA


PART II. The English-Speaking World

3 Beat Britain: Poetic Vision and Division in Albion's "Underground"


LUKE WALKER


4 Cosmopolitan Scum: A Genealogy of Beat in Subaltern Scottish

Literature


FIONA PATON


5 Beat Australia: Hydra to Balmain


NICHOLAS BIRNS


PART III. Western Europe

6 Êtes-vous Beat? Contemporary French Beat Writing


PEGGY PACINI


7 Children of Anarchy: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Italian Beats


MARIA ANITA STEFANELLI


8 Beat Influences in Dutch and Flemish Literature


JAAP VAN DER BENT9 Transmuting Beat Energies in the Belgian Francophone Matrix:

MaelstrÖm ReEvolution or the Brussels Reincarnation of the Beat Spirit

FRANCA BELLARSI


10 German Beats: Friendship and Collaboration


ALEXANDER GREIFFENSTERN


11 Beat Authorship and Beat Influences in Austrian Literature


THOMAS ANTONIC


12 Beat Affinities in Spanish Poetry


ESTÍBALIZ ENCARNACIÓN-PINEDO


13 Activists and Stuntmen: Envisioning Polish Beat


ANDRZEJ PIETRASZ and TOMASZ SAWCZUK


PART IV. Northern Europe

14 Russian Beat: Wilderness of Mirrors


THOMAS EPSTEIN


15 Denmark's To Beat or Not to Beat: Turèll, Ulrich, Laugesen


LARS MOVIN


16 Norwegian Beat Culture: Reading Beat and Being Beat in Oslo in the

1950s


FRIDA FORSGREN


17 Swedish Beat: Sture Darlstöm, Ulf Lundrell and the Influence of

the Beat Generation on Modern Swedish Literature


LISA AVDIC ÖST


18 Beat Poetry in Finland in the 1960s


HARRI VEIVO


PART V. The Mediterranean

19 The Beat Generation and Contemporary Greek Poetry


POLINA MACKAY


20 Beat Turkey: A Belated Influence


ERIK MORTENSON


21 Moroccan Beat Writers: Mrabet, Choukri, Layachi


EL HABIB LOUAI


PART VI. The East

22 Beat Japan: Shiraishi's Jazz Scroll and Sakaki's Foot Trail


A. ROBERT LEE


23 The Beats on China and Chinese "Beats": Cross Cultural Influences,

Impact and Legacy


BENJAMIN J. HEAL

Index

About the author

A. Robert Lee, formerly of the University of Kent, UK, was Professor of American Literature at Nihon University, Tokyo, 1997-2011. His writing includes Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the 2004 American Book Award, and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010).

Summary

Beat literature? Have not the great canonical names long grown familiar? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Likewise the frontline texts, still controversial in some quarters, assume their place in modern American literary history. On the Road serves as Homeric journey epic. "Howl" amounts to Beat anthem, confessional outcry against materialism and war. Naked Lunch, with its dark satiric laughter, envisions a dystopian world of power and word virus. But if these are all essentially America-centered, Beat has also had quite other literary exhalations and which invite far more than mere reception study. These are voices from across the Americas of Canada and Mexico, the Anglophone world of England, Scotland or Australia, the Europe of France or Italy and from the Mediterranean of Greece and the Maghreb, and from Scandinavia and Russia, together with the Asia of Japan and China. This anthology of essays maps relevant other kinds of Beat voice, names, texts. The scope is hemispheric, Atlantic and Pacific, West and East. It gives recognition to the Beat inscribed in languages other than English and reflective of different cultural histories. Likewise the majority of contributors come from origins or affiliations beyond the US, whether in a different English or languages spanning Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, or Chinese. The aim is to recognize an enlarged Beat literary map, its creative internationalism.

Report

The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literatureis a survey of the non-American Beat writers, written by multiple specialists, divided by country. Many of the specialists are natives of these countries and understand their subjects from the inside.
While writers sometimes closely analyse a poem and passage of prose, the essays are jargon-free, light on theory and highly readable. Quotations are necessarily restricted in length but even so one encounters some striking excerpts.
-Alexander Adams

Product details

• Authors: A. Robert Lee, A. Robert (Nihon University Lee
• Assisted by: A. Robert Lee (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2021
• EAN: 9781032095400
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3209540-0
• No. of pages: 366
• Series: Routledge Literature Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000