ENG 300 Studies in Historical Contexts: Beat Poetry
Though Ginsberg is dead and Snyder is seventy, the Beat movement still has
a charisma and a living energy. Its writers professed the ecstatic moment
and the revolt of the imagination against the chafing strictures of
Eisenhower's America. We'll read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but otherwise
stay with the remarkable poetry of several key writers—Allen Ginsberg,
Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Greg Corso. Our
focus will be the poetry itself—its techniques and themes of liberation
and transcendence—and its relationship to American culture of the Fifties.
The course will include the class production of a performance of the
famous Six Gallery Reading in which Ginsberg, Snyder, McClure, and others
participated. This course is offered in the second half, spring semester.
(Not offered 2005-2006)
Credits: 1/2
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