Chapter 21 The Beat Generation

1、小组成员小组成员: 王亚亚王亚亚 魏君丽魏君丽 吴燕燕吴燕燕 吴珍梅吴珍梅The Beat Generation In the 1950s there was a widespread discontentment among the postwar generation, whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent. this has come to be known as the Beat Generation. the Beats

2、emphasized an openness to varieties of experience beyond the limits of middle-class society; they explored the cultural underground of bebop jazz(比博普爵士乐 ) drug use, sexuality, and non-Western religions. The Beats were part of a “countercultural” movement. This means that the members of the Beat Gene

3、ration shared ideas and values that did not coincide with mainstream social values. Earlier countercultures such asthe European Romantics and Bohemians（波西米亚人） influenced the Beat Generation, just as the Beats would influence the Hippies in the United States. The original Beat Generation writers met

4、in New York: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, (in 1948) and later (in 1950) Gregory Corso (they are sometimes called the New York Beats though only Corso was from New York). Beat writers emphasized a visceral(出自内心深处的) engagement in worldly experiences combined with a quest for dee

5、per spiritual understanding; many of them developed a strong interest in Buddhism.Pictured from left to right is Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. The Definition of “Beat” The word beat, which Ginsberg and his friend Jack Kerouac picked up from a junkie friend of thei

6、rs, represented a non- conformist, rebellious attitude toward conventional values concerning sex,religion, the arts,and the America way of life A leading poet of the Beat Generation. Poet, Leader of literary movement, Traveller, Prophet(预言家), Religious believer. The “Geek” in the Contemporary Americ

7、an Poetry and the literary movement. Opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) Life and Career Ginsberg was born in a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson. As a young teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Time

8、s about political issues, such as World War II and workers rights.While in high school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman, inspired by his teachers passionate reading. In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia Univer

9、sity on a scholarship from the Young Mens Hebrew Association of Paterson.年轻人的希伯来协会帕特森。 In 1945, he joined the Merchant Marine to earn money to continue his education at Columbia. While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodb

10、erry Poetry Prize and served as president of the Philolexian Society, the campus literary and debate. In 1986 Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath金色的花环 by the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, as the second American poet since WH Auden.在马其顿斯特鲁加诗歌节，斯Major WorksEmpty Mirror

11、(1960) 空镜The Change(1963)变化The Fall of America (1973)美国的衰亡Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties (1977)Mind Breaths: Poems 19721977 (1978)精神呼吸：诗集Collected Poems: 19471980 (1984)White Shroud: Poems, 19801985 (1986)白色尸衣：诗集Selected Poems: 19471995 (1996)Writing Style 1.Ginsberg developed an individuali

12、stic style thats easily identified as Ginsbergian. 2.Ginsberg often had to defend his choice to break away from traditional poetic structure, often citing Williams, Pound, and Whitman as precursors. 3.Ginsbergs style may have seemed to critics chaotic or unpoetic, but to Ginsberg it was an open, ecs

13、tatic狂喜的 expression of thoughts and feelings that were naturally poetic 4.Many of Ginsbergs early long line experiments contain some sort of anaphora首语重复发, repetition of a fixed base (for example who in Howl, America in America) and this has become a recognizable feature of Ginsbergs style.Theme (Sy

14、mbolism)Take Howls for example 1. Madness: Howl shows madness to be a kind of elevated state filled with visions. But it can also be simply terrifying, as when Carl Solomon thinks he is losing the game of the actual Ping Pong of the abyss“.2. Drug: Howl describes the lives of drug addicts and alcoho

15、lics, and though these folks might be angelic for other reasons, the consequences of their drug use are not pretty. 3. Sex: Theres lots of sex in this poem. No widely distributed American poem had such graphic descriptions of sexuality before Howl, which was originally declared obscene by the U.S. g

16、overnment. 4. Politics: Howl provides ample evidence of Ginsbergs Marxist beliefs, which are often expressed in a playful and humorous fashion.5. War: Ginsberg was a pacifist who believed that war always serves the interests of the rich and powerful. Howl is freighted with images of Cold War anxiety

17、, the Atomic age, and the military-industrial complex.American poetZen Buddhist(禅宗佛教徒禅宗佛教徒) Environmental activistDeep ecology philosopher（深生态哲学家）（深生态哲学家）Gary Snyder (1930- )Life and Career Snyder was born in San Francisco, and brought up in Oregon and Washington State. He received his BA in anthrop

18、ology at Reed College, Portland, in 1951. His subsequent career has been a remarkable combination of the academic and the contemplative, spiritual study and physical labor. Between working as a logger, a trail-crew member, and a seaman on a Pacific tanker, he studied Oriental languages at Berkeley w

19、as associated with Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, lived in Japan, later studied Buddhism there, and won numerous literary prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship古根海姆学者奖 and the Pulitzer Prize. He now teaches literature and wilderness thought at the University of California at Davis.Maj

20、or WorksRiprap and Cold Mountain Poems (1965) 砌石与寒山诗Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965) 山水无尽头Turtle Island (1974) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 龟岛Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 (1986) 留在雨中:1947年至1985年未发表的诗Theme 1. Stillness is central to Snyders poetic concern. He seeks to locate a p

21、oint of stillness amid the constant change of the universe.2. Erotic experience, one primal activity of human life.3. Deep love for the new life. Eg. The EggW. S. Merwin William Stanley Merwin was born in New York, on September 30, 1927, son of a clergyman. He studied medieval literature and romance

22、 languages, and stayed long in EuropeFrance, Spain, and Portugal. And he began writing hymns赞美诗 as a child. He moved to Hawaii to study Zen Buddhism in 1976.Life and CareerHe has also published nearly twenty books of translationSir Gawain and the Green Knight (2004)Dantes Purgatorio (2000)The Lost U

23、pland (1992)Summer Doorways (2006)The Book of Fables (2007)Theme His poetry is generally concerned with the dilemmas of humankind and the wholesome effect of the nature world. He wrote about Vietnam war, the death of the whales, the ecological pollution and the direction America takes, its poisoning

24、 of the earth and its hi-tech triumphs emerging as symbols of death. There is a pessimistic strain of thought in Merwin. Style Merwins style has undergone some changes over the years, but there is always his emphasis on myths and emblems which he sees in the occurrences of daily lives. And there is

25、always conscious artistry. Major WorksBeasts (1956)The Drunk in the Furnace (1960) 熔炉旁的酒鬼The Lice (1967)虱子The Carrier of Ladders 承运人的梯子(1970)won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971The Compass Flower (1977)Opening the Hand (1983)The Rain in the Trees (1988),The Vixen (1996)The River Sound (1999) The Pupil (20

26、02)Migration: New and Selected Poems (2005) Present Company (Copper Canyon, 2007) The Shadow of Sirius 天狼星的影子(2008) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009Robert Bly (1926-) Life and career Bly spent three years in solitude, and stated later that a poet needs to experience loneliness and “inwardness”. Bly ha

27、s had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. Poetry Bly stood against the kind of academic verse which Eliot and Ransom championed, and supported surrealist poetry. He feels that the poem must free himself from his rational ego and release the deeper, the less conscious levers of mind, a

28、nd known as the “deep image”.Major WorksSilence in the Snowy Fields ( 1962)雪地里的宁静, which is his first volume of verseThe Light Around the Body (1967), 身体周围的光which won the National Book AwardA Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War (1967)Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (1971)This Body is Made of C

29、amphor and Gopherwood (1977)This tree will be here for a thousand years(1979)此树将活千年Theme Blys poetry is generally moody, eg. Silence in the Snowy Fields ( 1962) , his first volume of verse. There is exhibited an amount of obsession with death in some works.James Wright (1927-1980) Life and Career Wr

30、ight was born and grew up on a farm and experienced poverty, and suffered from depression and bipolar mood disorders and also battled alcoholism his entire life. He experienced several nervous breakdowns, was hospitalized, and was subjected to electroshock therapy. His dark moods and focus on emotional suffering were part of his life and often the focus of his poetry Poetry. Given the emotional turmoil he experienced personally, his poems are often remarkably optimistic in expressing a faith in life and human transcendence. His seminal