1st Edition

The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature

Edited By A. Robert Lee Copyright 2018
    366 Pages
    by Routledge

    366 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    Notes on Contributors

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    A. ROBERT LEE

    PART I. Canada, 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 BENT

    9 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 1950s

    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

    Biography

    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).

    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