Anti-Humanism in the Counterculture (eBook)

Guy Stevenson (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2020 | 1st ed. 2020
VII, 223 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-030-47760-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s American literary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression,

romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steeped too in opposite ideas - ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned the majority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politically reactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of iconic figures in the counterculture - the sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed 'philosopher of hip', Norman Mailer - Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxes at its center. Between a Walt Whitman-like optimism and pessimistic modernist intuitions; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between social egalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, he argues, are vital to an understanding of the cultural and political worlds these writers helped shape - in their time and beyond.

Guy Stevenson is Lecturer in English at Goldsmiths and Queen Mary Colleges, University of London, UK and a recent postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the University of Edinburgh, UK. He specialises in modernism and the 1960s counterculture and has published widely on both - including pieces in The European Journal of English Studies and in anthologies about the writers Henry Miller and Ezra Pound. Guy's essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, The Times and Toronto's National Post, and he is currently editing an issue of the journal Textual Practice, entitled 'Anti-Humanist Modernisms'.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.10.2020
• Zusatzinfo: VII, 223 p.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: American Renaissance • anti-humanism • Beat generation • Counter-Culture • Experimental American literature • Ezra Pound • Henry Miller • Humanism • Jack Kerouac • Marshall McLuhan • Norman Mailer • Post-War • William Burroughs
• ISBN-10: 3-030-47760-6 / 3030477606
• ISBN-13: 978-3-030-47760-8 / 9783030477608