《英美诗歌鉴赏课件》Beat-Generation

1、Beat GenerationBeat movementA Bohemian rebellion against established society which came to prominence about 1956 and had its centers in San Francisco and New York City. The term “Beat” expressed both exhaustion and beatification(受福) in that the writers, tired of conventional society, and disgusted b

2、y it, believed that thoroughgoing（彻底的） disaffiliation（切断联系） from all aspects of the manners and mores（道德观） of what they saw as a corrupt, crass（粗糙的）, commercial world would bring its own kind of blissful illumination（启发）, aided by drink and drugs. Writers of the movement expressed their views in the

3、ir own “hip” vocabulary, combined with phrases from Buddhism by which they were influenced, but there is a personal statement and power that goes beyond this jargon in the works of the leading literary figures, who include the poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and their San Francisco publisher

4、Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the novelist Jack Kerouac. Older writers who related to the movement included Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, and Kenneth Rexroth. Close to them and yet removed in part from the Beat movement because of his greater violence is William Burroughs.Background informationThe moveme

5、nt after WWII. Holocaust, A-Bomb, Modern scientific development, McCarthyism, doubt on American DreamThe young men who grew up during the Second World War thought that American society was full of corruption, selfishness, hypocrisy, commercialization. These young people seemed interested in nothing.

6、It seems that these young people enjoy life to their hearty, spiritually they have nothing. They drank, took drugs, believed oriental Buddhism.New York and San Francisco, City Light1. Allen Ginsberg Howl2. Jack Kerouac On the Road3. William BurroughsJunkie, The Naked Lunch4. Laurence Ferlinghetti5.

7、Norman MailerContextJack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. He had a private and Catholic early education, and he got a football scholarship to Columbia University, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs. Kerouac quit school his sophomore year and joined th

8、e Merchant Marine, starting the travels of his youth which would become the basis of On the Road, his second and most acclaimed novel. On the Road, published in 1957, became the most famous work of the Beat Generation of writers. It is known to be an account of Kerouacs (Sal Paradise) travels with N

9、eal Cassady (Dean Moriarty). The main characters are based on Kerouacs friends, many of them prominent Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and William Burroughs (Bull Lee). With his long, stream-of-consciousness sentences and long paragraphs, Kerouac sought to do no less than re

10、volutionize the form of American prose. According to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac typed the first draft of On the Road on a fifty-foot-long roll of paper.On the Road gave voice to a rising, dissatisfied fringe(边缘) of the young generation of the late forties and early fifties. It was after the Great Depre

11、ssion and World War II and more than a decade before the Civil Rights movement and the turmoil of the 60s. Yet, though it has been fifty years since the events in On the Road, the feelings, ideas, and experiences in the novel are still remarkably fresh as expressions of restless, idealistic youth wh

12、o yearn for something more than the bland（乏味的） conformity of a generally prosperous society.Other works by Jack Kerouac include his first novel, The Town and the City,The Dharma Bums (based on his explorations of Buddhism with friend and poet Gary Snyder), The Subterraneans,Big Sur,Visions of Cody (

13、a densely packed, more experimental account of the events in On the Road), and Visions of Gerard (based on Kerouacs brother and childhood in Massachusetts).Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of 47.SummaryIn the winter of 1947, the reckless and joyous Dean Moriarty, fresh ou

14、t of another stint in jail and newly married, comes to New York City and meets Sal Paradise, a young writer with an intellectual group of friends, among them the poet Carlo Marx. Dean fascinates Sal, and their friendship begins three years of restless journeys back and forth across the country. With

15、 a combination of bus rides and adventurous hitchhiking escapades（异常出轨的行为）, Sal goes to his much-dreamed-of west to join Dean and more friends in Denver, and then continues west by himself, working as a fieldworker in California for awhile, among other things. The next year, Dean comes east to Sal a

16、gain, foiling（阻止） Sals stable life once more, and they drive west together, with more crazy adventures on the way at Bull Lees in New Orleans, ending in San Francisco this time. The winter after that, Sal goes to Dean, and they blaze across the country together in friendly fashion, and Dean settles

17、in New York for awhile. In the spring, Sal goes to Denver alone, but Dean soon joins him and they go south all the way to Mexico City this time.Through all of this constant movement, there is an array of colorful characters, shifting landscapes, dramas, and personal development. Dean, a big womanizer, will have three wives and four children in the course of these three years. Perceptive（有理解力的） Sal, who at the b