American Postwar Pilgrimage: The Beats in Paris

• Thesis title in Czech: Američtí pováleční poutníci: Beatnici v Paříži
• Thesis title in English: American Postwar Pilgrimage: The Beats in Paris
• Key words: Beat Generation|Transculturalism|Transnationalism|Poválečné období|Anglophone|Francophone
• English key words: Beat Generation|Transculturalism|Transnationalism|Postwar|Pilgrimage|Anglophone|Francophone
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 20.02.2015
• Date of assignment: 20.02.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 25.02.2015
• Date and time of defence: 04.09.2018 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 06.08.2018
• Date of proceeded defence: 04.09.2018
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The goal of this thesis is to study the influence of French culture on the writings of the Beat Generation in the post-war period. The focus of this work will be the communication and mutual interest between French and American literary and cultural figures between 1944 and the 1960s. The thesis will examine the works of Beat Generation poets and writers including Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956), “Au tombeau d’Apollinaire” (1958), and “Kaddish” (1959); William S. Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch (1959); Gregory Corso’s Gasoline (1958), Bomb (1958) and The Happy Birthday of Death (1960); Jack Kerouac’s Satori In Paris (1966), Big Sur (1962), and On the Road (1957). In so doing, it will take a transnational approach to the Beat Generation and mainly its cultural and spiritual development in Paris from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. This is a unique approach that has been overlooked by most critics and will prove that the Beat Generation marked out the global circulation of art beyond borders, exploring the possibilities of transnationalism and globalization by incorporating French surrealism and romanticism as an integral part of their prose, poetry and art. The productive experience of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and other American Beat writers in Paris will be the major focus of my investigation.

The object of the thesis is to explore the new concept of artistic enfranchisement for the Parisian-American literary scene instigated by Beat writers, and the influence of the cultural past on these transplanted avant-garde writers in the French capital. For many Americans in the 20th century, the quest for artistic and cultural knowledge ended in Paris, a city which has been coined “an arbiter of cultural value in the postwar era” by Loren Glass.1 As a result, French literature and art greatly contributed to the stylistics of American writing in the 1950s. These writers sought to draw on the major “literary antecedents in order to get closer”2 to a literary experience in which the past and the present intermingled.

In this way, the thesis will take a transnational approach to the American cultural phenomenon that was the Beat Generation, paying attention to the wide range of contributions of these writers, not only in changing the homogenized tone of “authoritative” literature to “individualistic” literature, but also in shaping social and cultural landscapes around Europe and in the USA. In so doing, the thesis will make use of some of the most prominent critical writings about the Beats. Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno and James Campbell both provide fresh and nimble descriptions of the Beat Generation’s main goals and theories, while Bill Morgan explores the close communications between the main representatives of the Beats, and Loren Glass investigates the peculiarities of publishing avant-garde literature in post-war America. Since I am going to juxtapose American and French cultures in my thesis, I will also take the essays of Antonin Artaud, Andre Breton, Jean Cocteau and Brion Gysin (who was active in France, though he was British), which represented the modern human condition in the Western world with the same radical assault and cruelty towards the conventions of post-war society that is present in the books and poems of the Beats.

This thesis will come to a greater understanding of the aspects of the life, culture, fashion, and cinematography which contributed to the Beats’ transnational importance during their time in Paris and the years after. As I am planning to work on my BA Thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris, I will also utilize sources in French I will find there, including documents and essays about the period.

Stephan Delbos has agreed to be my thesis advisor, and in three months I will submit a detailed chapter outline to him.

References

Literary sources
Primary
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4). City Lights Publishing, 2001. +Au tombeau d’Apollinaire”(1958),“Kaddish”(1959);
Burroughs, William S.. The Naked Lunch. Groove Press, 2013.
Corso. Gregory. Gasoline. City Lights Publishers, 2001.
— Bomb. City Lights Books, 1958.
— The Happy Birthday of Death. New Directions. 1960.
Kerouac, Jack. Satori In Paris. Groove Press, 1988.
— Big Sur. Gallimard, 1979.
— On The Road. Penguin Books, 1999.
Secondary
Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960. City Lights Publishers, 2001.

Campbell, James. This Is The Beat Generation: New York–San Francisco–Paris. University of California Press, 2001.
Donald Allen and George F. Butterick (edd.), The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised. New York: Evergreen Books, 1982.
Glass, Loren. Counterculture Colophon: Grove Press, the Evergreen Review, and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde. Stanford University Press, 2013.

ed. Morgan, Bill; Jack Kerouac (Author); Allen Ginsberg (Author). Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters. Penguin Books, 2011.
Parkinson, Thomas. A Casebook On The Beat. University of California, 1961.

Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. Grove Press, 2001.

Meltzer, David. San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets. City Lights Publishing, 2001.
Morgan, Bill. The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation. Counterpoint, 2011.
Morgan, Bill. The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Counterpoint, 2009.
Grace, Nancy M. and Jennie Skerl. The Transnational Beat Generation. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Johnston, Allan. “Consumption, Addiction, Vision, Energy: Political Economies and Utopian Visions in the Writings of the Beat Generation” College Literature 32.2 (Spring, 2005): JSTOR <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115269>

Films
Workman, Chuck. The Source: The Story of the Beats and the Beat Generation. 88 min, 1999.

Epstein, Rob. Howl. 84 min, 2010.
Mordillat, Gérard. En compagnie d'Antonin Artaud. 90 min, 1993.

French Writers
Céline. Louis-Ferdinand. Tr. Ralph Manheim. Death on the Installment Plan. New Directions, 1971.

Baudlaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du Mal. ed. Claude Pichois. Gallimard, 1861.
Fifield, William. “Jean Cocteau, The Art of Poetry Fiction No.34”. Paris Review 32. 1964. Web. <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4485/the-art-of-fiction-no-34-jean-cocteau>.
Breunig, LeRoy C. Guillaume Apollinaire. Columbia Univesity Press, 1961.
Berrigan, Ted. “Jack Kerouac, The Art of Fiction No. 41”. The Paris Review. The Paris Review. <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4260/the-art-of-fiction-no-41-jack-kerouac>
Music
Ginsberg, Allen. First Blues. John Hammond Records, 1982.