Allen Ginsberg and American Protest Literature Essay -- American Protes

BUNEA VALENTIN LEONARDGROUP 3A, ENGLISH-AMERICAN STUDIESALLEN GINSBERG, HOWL AND THE LITERATURE OF PROTESTAllen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was an important issue in the Beat contemporaries Movement that took place right before the revolutionary Ameri tin 60s. Other major mother writers (also called cramnicks) were Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. The beat poetry was meant to be oral and very effective in readings. It developed out of poetry readings in underground clubs.(a beautiful image of these secret clubs can be found in the movie called Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams playing the main character). Some argued that it was the grandparent of rap music. The term Beat Generation was coined by Kerouac in the fall of the 1948 in New York City. The word beat referred loosely to their shared sense of spiritual exhaustion and diffuse feelings of rebellion against what they go through as the general conformity, hypocrisy and materialism of a larger society around them caught up in he unprecedented prosperity of postwar America.The beat poetry was the most anticanon form of literature in the United States. The poetry is a cry of pain and rage, a howl at what the poets see as the loss of Americas innocence and as a tragic waste.Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey. His parents were second generation Russian- Jewish immigrants, left-wing radicals raise in Marxism, nudism, feminism, generally in the modern revolutionary ideas of his times. This background certainly did influence his evolution as a revolutionary poet. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a teacher and a poet, whose work was published in New York Times. During Ginsbergs childhood, his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, started to suffer from paranoia. She was institutionalized and nonethelesstually lobotomized. She died in an asylum in 1956. her life is the subject one Allens poem entitled Kaddish and which was written as a compensation of her funeral service.After he graduated a publi c high school, Ginsberg won a acquisition from Columbia University where he became a famous student, making friends with Williams Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. An... ...pGinsbergs style is not disciplined, but based on a spontaneous observation of ideas, violating all the current artistic canons, provoking a literary and social scandal. The powerfulrepresentations of the urban realities, of the language and matter of the urban streets were meant to induce powerful reactions of the reader. He brought the culture down to the level of streets and neighborhoods. Thats why the language and the images are obscene, including symbolism and direct references to oral and anal sex, homosexuality and drug use. We can even say that the form of the poem seems to be a self exploration, shaped after his own life.What Ginsberg manages to do is to freely express his attitudes the way they overwhelm him defiance, longing, terror, hysteria, prayer, anger, joy, exhaustion, culminating with insanity an d suicide.BIBLIOGRAPHYwww.sparknotes.comwww.questia.comUNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE- OUTLINE OF AMERICAN LITERATURENORTON ANTHOLOGY