The French Genealogy of the Beat Generation: Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac's Appropriations of Modern Literature, from Rimbaud to Michaux

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The Francophilia of the Beat circle in the New York of the mid-1940s is well known, as is the importance of the Beat Hotel in the Paris of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but how exactly did French literature and culture participate in the emergence of the Beat Generation French modernism did much more than inspire its first major writers, it materially shaped their works, as this comparative study reveals through close textual analysis of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's appropriations of French literature and culture. Sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not, their appropriations take multiple forms, ranging from allusions, invocations and citations to adaptations and translations, and they involve a vast array of works, including the poetic realist films of Carn and Cocteau, the existentialist philosophy of Sartre, and the poems and novels of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Proust, Gide, Apollinaire, St.-John Perse, Artaud, Cline, Genet and Michaux. While clarifying the extent of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac's engagements with French literature and culture, in-depth analysis of their textual appropriations emphasises differences in their views of literature, philosophy and politics, which help us understand the early Beat circle was divided from the start. The book's close-readings also transform our perception of Burroughs' cut-up practice, Kerouac's spontaneous prose, and Ginsberg's poetics of open secrecy.

Reviews

The first and most thorough book-length attempt to rectify [a] disciplinary blind-spot by uncovering the major Beat Generation writers multi-faceted appropriations of French literary antecedents. From a Francophone perspective, but with a comparativists sensibility for nuanced readings of translingual and cross-cultural literary appropriation, Lanes essays tackle both the infamous and the forgotten works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs Through her genealogical, archaeological, and inter-textual approach, Lanes startling, at times haunting, juxtapositions reveal the vibrant and diverse evolution of transatlantic cultural networks across a constellation of slippery texts and subversive artworks In her genealogy of the French roots of the Beat Generations rhizomatic outgrowths, Vronique Lanes The French Genealogy of the Beat Generation offers an entertaining and erudite invitation to explore the transcultural appropriations that generated Americas most subversive and marginalized literature. * LEsprit Crateur *
Lanes groundbreaking study ... is replete with original and perceptive comparative close readings that will appeal to French as well as Beat literature specialists. * French Studies *
Vronique Lane's The French Genealogy of the Beat Generation fills an important and often unacknowledged gap in the study of these seemingly echt-American rebels. The Beats' literary Frenchness is more than an artifact of their timeit is a key to their literary values and a measure of the tradition of literary revolt that spread from 19th-century France across continents and centuries. Lane elucidates the connections with wit, grace, and style. * Luc Sante, Visiting Professor of Writing and the History of Photography, Bard College, USA, and author of The Other Paris (2015) *
Lane has written a pearl of a book, illuminating a central aspect of Beat literature that's long been obscure. * Ann Charters, Professor of American Literature, University of Connecticut, USA *
This timely and informative book establishes the importance of French writers for the Beat generation of writers so effortlessly and convincingly that one can only wonder why it has never been done before. Deploying an intimate grasp of the works of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac based on detailed textual analysis, this ambitious study is sure to be a reference-point for many years to come. * Mairad Hanrahan, Professor and Chair of French, University College London, UK *
Vronique Lanes informed close readings succeed in showing that French Modernity was much more than a mere influence for the major Beat authors. While clarifying their relations to the works of Rimbaud, of Cocteau, but also of Saint-John Perse and Michaux or the cinema of Carn, this study revives in unexpected ways the poetic project, embraced by both the American and French traditions it investigates, of changing our idea of mankind. A book that ought to be read on both sides of the Atlantic. * Dominique Rabat, Professor of 20th Century French Literature, Universit Paris Diderot - Paris VII, France *

Author Bio

Vronique Lane is Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature at Lancaster University, UK. She has taught French critical thought on the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris, France, and has been Assistant Professor of French at Wesleyan University, USA, as well as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Research Institute for the Humanities at Keele University, UK. She has a PhD on Artaud and Genet from the Universit Paris Diderot - Paris VII.