The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature
Routledge Literature Handbooks Series

Beat literature? Have not the great canonical names long grown familiar? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Likewise the frontline texts, still controversial in some quarters, assume their place in modern American literary history. On the Road serves as Homeric journey epic. "Howl" amounts to Beat anthem, confessional outcry against materialism and war. Naked Lunch, with its dark satiric laughter, envisions a dystopian world of power and word virus. But if these are all essentially America-centered, Beat has also had quite other literary exhalations and which invite far more than mere reception study. These are voices from across the Americas of Canada and Mexico, the Anglophone world of England, Scotland or Australia, the Europe of France or Italy and from the Mediterranean of Greece and the Maghreb, and from Scandinavia and Russia, together with the Asia of Japan and China. This anthology of essays maps relevant other kinds of Beat voice, names, texts. The scope is hemispheric, Atlantic and Pacific, West and East. It gives recognition to the Beat inscribed in languages other than English and reflective of different cultural histories. Likewise the majority of contributors come from origins or affiliations beyond the US, whether in a different English or languages spanning Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, or Chinese. The aim is to recognize an enlarged Beat literary map, its creative internationalism.

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

A. ROBERT LEE

PART I. Canada and Mexico

1 Canada Beats: A Complex Legacy

KATHARINE STREIP

2 The Beat Presence in Mexican Literature

ALBERTO ESCOBAR DE LA GARMA

PART II. The English-Speaking World

3 Beat Britain: Poetic Vision and Division in Albion’s "Underground"

LUKE WALKER

4 Cosmopolitan Scum: A Genealogy of Beat in Subaltern Scottish

Literature

FIONA PATON

5 Beat Australia: Hydra to Balmain

NICHOLAS BIRNS

PART III. Western Europe

6 Êtes-vous Beat? Contemporary French Beat Writing

PEGGY PACINI

7 Children of Anarchy: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Italian Beats

MARIA ANITA STEFANELLI

8 Beat Influences in Dutch and Flemish Literature

JAAP VAN DER BENT9 Transmuting Beat Energies in the Belgian Francophone Matrix:

MaelstrÖm ReEvolution or the Brussels Reincarnation of the Beat Spirit

FRANCA BELLARSI

10 German Beats: Friendship and Collaboration

ALEXANDER GREIFFENSTERN

11 Beat Authorship and Beat Influences in Austrian Literature

THOMAS ANTONIC

12 Beat Affinities in Spanish Poetry

ESTÍBALIZ ENCARNACIÓN-PINEDO

13 Activists and Stuntmen: Envisioning Polish Beat

ANDRZEJ PIETRASZ and TOMASZ SAWCZUK

PART IV. Northern Europe

14 Russian Beat: Wilderness of Mirrors

THOMAS EPSTEIN

15 Denmark’s To Beat or Not to Beat: Turèll, Ulrich, Laugesen

LARS MOVIN

16 Norwegian Beat Culture: Reading Beat and Being Beat in Oslo in the

1950s

FRIDA FORSGREN

17 Swedish Beat: Sture Darlstöm, Ulf Lundrell and the Influence of

the Beat Generation on Modern Swedish Literature

LISA AVDIC ÖST

18 Beat Poetry in Finland in the 1960s

HARRI VEIVO

PART V. The Mediterranean

19 The Beat Generation and Contemporary Greek Poetry

POLINA MACKAY

20 Beat Turkey: A Belated Influence

ERIK MORTENSON

21 Moroccan Beat Writers: Mrabet, Choukri, Layachi

EL HABIB LOUAI

PART VI. The East

22 Beat Japan: Shiraishi’s Jazz Scroll and Sakaki’s Foot Trail

A. ROBERT LEE

23 The Beats on China and Chinese "Beats": Cross Cultural Influences,

Impact and Legacy

BENJAMIN J. HEAL

Index

A. Robert Lee, formerly of the University of Kent, UK, was Professor of American Literature at Nihon University, Tokyo, 1997-2011. His writing includes Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the 2004 American Book Award, and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010).