Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Website

ENGL 288 03, "Special Topics: Romantics to the Beat Generation"
Professor Robert Barsky
Thursdays 4-7PM, Calhoun 103

Office hours: Monday 2-3; Tuesday and Thursday 10-11, Furman 219

This course will explore the influence that Romantic poets, notably Lord Byron, and P.B. Shelley, had upon Beat Generation poets and writers. We will begin by discussing some of the seminal works in Romantic poetry, including Keats’s and Wordsworth’s descriptions of their poetic ambitions and projects, and we’ll then turn to some of the characteristics of the literature and politics of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a range of women writers of the Beat Generation including Diane DiPrima and Anne Waldman. We will undertake our reading under the assumption that there was something profoundly liberating in such works as the “Lyrical Ballads” and, moreover, in the comical and irreverent masterpiece by Lord Byron, Don Juan, which served as impetuses for the kinds of work we found in post-war American Beats. This course will offer students the opportunity to study but also to create their own creative work, if they so desire, as a means of exploring first hand the creative process inspired through the genius and the generosity of these writers.

Texts: (available in the bookstore)
Beat Writers at Work: The Paris Review
Women of the Beat Generation
The Portable Beat Reader
The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower
Romantic Poetry and Prose
Don Juan

Some good books about the Beats which are available in the library
The Holy Barbarians, Author: Lawrence Lipton
Essential McLuhan, Author: Marshall McLuhan
Word Virus, Author: William Burroughs
Indian Journals, Author: Allen Ginsberg
Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, Author: Sylvère Lotringer
The Beat Book, Author: Ann Waldman, ed.
Beat Down to your Soul, ed., Ann Charters
Berrigan, Ted. "The Art of Fiction XLI: Jack Kerouac." Paris Review 43 (1968): 61-105.
Cassady, Carolyn. Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg. New York: W. Morrow, 1990..
Davidson, Michael. The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
(background reading) Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
Holmes, John Clellon. Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1988.
Knight, Arthur and Kit Knight, eds. The Beat Vision, A Primary Source Book. New York:Paragon House Publishers, 1987.
Knight, Brenda. Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists, and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1996.
American Chronicle: Six Decades in American Life 1920-1980, eds. Lois Gordon and Alan Gordon (N.Y.: Atheneum, 1987).
A Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 16 The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, ed. Ann Charters (Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co.1983).
Gifford, Barry and Lawrence Lee. Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac (N.Y. : Penguin, 1978).
Literary San Francisco: A Pictorial History from Its Beginnings to the Present Day, eds. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights, 1980).

Websites:
http://www.connectotel.com/marcus/beatfaq.html
http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/
http://www.jackmagazine.com/beatnews/index.html
http://colinp1.home.mindspring.com/beats.htm
http://members.aol.com/gethep/
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/beatwomen.htm
http://www.cmgww.com/historic/kerouac/
http://www.kerouac.com/

Video and Audio Materials: [*optional, for those interested in the works from a performance perspective]
Pull my daisy [videorecording] / directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie ; written and narrated by Jack Kerouac.
Video McLuhan [videorecording] / written & narrated by Tom Wolfe.
Kerouac [videorecording] / a film by John Antonelli
The Beat Generation [videorecording]/ a film by Janet Forman
Fried Shoes, Cooked Diamonds, by Donstanzo Allione
Growing Up in America: The Sixties – Then and Now [videorecording]
Allen Ginsberg’s poetry [audio]

Grading and assignments
3 written assignments, 8-12 pages each, due in class October 2nd; October 30th; December 11th: 75%
1 oral presentation, 7-10 minutes
participation, oral presentation and contribution to the class: 25%

Note: all assignments must be handed in (or e-mailed) before or by the due date. Students are welcome to vet their work with me before handing it in, in lieu of revisions.

Reading assignments, week-by-week:
First class: introduction

September 4. The Poetic Ambitions of the Romantics
Text: Romantic Poetry and Prose; review your readings of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, as well as the introductions and the “Preface”.

*note: no class September 11th; to be made up on the last day.

September 18. Lord Byron’s Approach
Text: Continued discussion of the Romantics, notably Keats and Shelley; Don Juan; introduction and as many cantos as you can read!

September 25. From the Romantics to the Beats, Influence and Expansion
Texts: Continued discussion of Lord Byron, with special reference to his letters and their relationship to "Don Juan": “Introduction” to the Beat Writers at Work; “Sisters, Saints and Sibyls” in Women of the Beat Generation; “Variations on a Generation” and “The Best Minds of a Generation” in Portable Beat Reader; “Literature, Humor and the Effects of Creative Discourses” in The Chomsky Effect.

October 2. Allen Ginsberg
texts: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader.
First paper due in class

October 9. Neil Cassady and William Burroughs
texts: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader.

October 16. Gregory Corso
texts: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader.

October 23. Jack Kerouac
texts: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader.

October 30. Diane Di Prima, Joanne Kyger, Ann Waldman
Texts: The Portable Beat Reader and Women of the Beat Generation.
Second paper due in class

November 7. The Philosophy and the Psychology of the Beat Generation, and its relationship to previous movements
Text: “Effective Precursors” in The Chomsky Effect

November 14. Amiri Baraka
Text: The Portable Beat Book.

November 21. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Text: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader

November 28: Thanksgiving, no class

December 4. Lenore Kandel, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Robert Creeley
Text: Beat Writers at Work, The Portable Beat Reader.

December 11. [extra class] Conclusions
Text: “Effective Teaching” in The Chomsky Effect. Final Paper due in class

LIBRARY OF WORKS!

Agliano, Christopher Michael

Arnold, Heidi

Bidikov, Luke

Chuang, Amanda Fuang

Cohen, Joanna Rebecca

de Stadler, Andrew Martin

Deupree, America Idalia E.

DeWitt, Charles Percy

Eisner, Taylor Lynne

Esakov, Andrew Robert

Galella, Jessica Marie

Grimes, James Matthew

Harmony, Paige Delia

Harris, Evan James

Jones, Carolyn Henshaw

Krenitski, Scott Samuel

Lawrence, Bradley Charles

Lewis, Feylyn Mercedies

Mones, Benjamin Yale

Munro, Robert William

Park, Jihyun Janie

Parker, Jessica Frances

Pittman, David Thomas

Poschl, Isabella Martha

Rahal, Andrew William

Sarnowski, Michael Edward

Simmons, Amanda Elaine

Steinberg, Lauren Nicole

Stickney, Robert Lawrence

Taylor, Sharon Denise

Watts, Allyson Nicole