The Cambridge Companion to the Beats offers an in-depth overview of one of the most innovative and popular literary periods in America, the Beat era. The Beats were a literary and cultural phenomenon originating in New York City in the 1940s that reached worldwide significance. Although its most well-known figures are Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, the Beat movement radiates out to encompass a rich diversity of figures and texts that merit further study. Consummate innovators, the Beats had a profound effect not only on the direction of American literature, but also on models of socio-political critique that would become more widespread in the 1960s and beyond. Bringing together the most influential Beat scholars writing today, this Companion provides a comprehensive exploration of the Beat movement, asking critical questions about its associated figures and arguing for their importance to postwar American letters. Challenges the idea that the Beats were merely a small group of friends, drawing attention to a wide range of figures and texts associated with the Beat movement, including women, writers of color, and non-US writers Presents well-known Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs in new contexts, re-evaluating the place of Beat writers in twentieth-century literature and culture by moving readers away from understanding these writers solely through their biographies The Companion format helps students and other readers understand the importance of the Beat writers by giving a much broader sense of the Beat Generation, reflecting their complex relationship to US literature and culture
- ISBN: 9781316635711
- Editorial: Cambridge University Press
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 332
- Fecha Publicación: 01/02/2017
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: