文献综述样板.doc

Literature Review

In 1957, Kerouac published chronologically On the Road. Since the publication of their own works, the critical responses to the Beat Generation have varied from one extreme to another, from inordinate praise to absolute condemnation. In This Is The Beat Generation (The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 1952.), John Clellon Holmes said, it is a postwar generation, and, in a world which seems to mark its cycles by its wars, it is already being compared to that other postwar generation, which dubbed itself ‘lost’. The Beat writers have been admired for being wild, sensational and irresponsible. Carole Uattlied Vopat argued, “Kerouac’s characters take to the road not to find life but to leave it all behind” (1959).
Introductions have been called pointless, formless, autobiographical ramblings. His work, as Paul Carroll argued, “Is redundant, ungrammatical, prosy, boring, and smug”. Skerl and Jemmie argued “Just as The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament of the ‘Lost Generation’, so it seems certain that On the Road will come to be known as that of the ‘Beat Generation’” in Unspeakable Visions of the Individual in Academic(Brandywine Press, 1972). Guinness said “appears to trigger a release that slips the leash of the normal, rational, waking mind. That which reasons logically, separates the self from the external world, and quantifies reality into colors, shapes, smells, and sounds are disinhibited.” in The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever (1975). In The Making of Counter Culture (Brandywine Press, 1985), Theodore Roszak remarked: “The problem is sexuality, traditionally one of the most potent sources of civilized man’s discontent. To liberate sexuality would be to create a society in which technocratic discipline would be impossible.”
Maybe there are two selves: social and natural (authentic), every human being, however, Dean just keep the natural one. The Roaring Twenties, and the generation that made them roar, are going through a sentimental revival, and the comparison is valuable. In Understanding the Beats (University of South Carolina Press, 1992), Foster Edward Halsey said, the shock that older people feel at the sight of this Beat Generation is, at its deepest level, not so much repugnance at the facts, as it is distress at the attitudes which move it. Though worried by this distress, they most often argue or legislate in terms of the facts rather than the attitudes.
Fred Moramarco said, “To read On the Road is to confront obituary notices from the anguished soul of America during some of its most troubled days. And the Beats movement is totally evaluated by Bernard Fleischmann as against the values and mores of the middle class.” However some critics such as Tim Hunt argued, “On the Road is best understood as skillfully managed traditional novel”. And there are still some critics who regard this. Writing style is as completely pointless and irrational. Robert Phillips put it as lack of form. And Thomas Merrill ever said “the spontaneous writing can not be fully appreciated by technical analysis alone” (2004). By carrying out this method of writing, the beats “are interested in making the real more real” (2004).In Dean Moriarty’s Search for His Authentic Self (Inner Mongolia Normal University, 2004), the essence of human is to be in the moment and living without need for what John Keats called “reaching irritate-after facts and reason”. Hohhot said “The novel centers about Dean Moriarity and Neal Cassady’s paradise despairs of the emptiness and futility of his collegiate studies and drops them to embark upon frantic auto trip back and forth across the country.” in Dean Moriarty's Search for His Authentic Self (Inner Mongolia Normal University, 2004). The trips suggest a search for someone who will have the vision and the wisdom that traditionally were the father’s. Leer, David V Society and Identity marked Ginsberg’s poetry is “an expression of the simultaneity of what he has termed an undifferentiated consciousness” in The Columbia History of the American Novel (2005).
All the available materials of criticism in English which cover a time span from 1974 to 2002 are found in the National Library and through Internet. All the domestic materials of criticism that cover a time span from 1984 to 2003 are from the main magazines of literary criticism such as Foreign Literature, Foreign Literature Study and Foreign Literature Review.
In China, the criticism to this quite unique American literary movement started very late. In The Beat Generation (1996), Li Si argued “It is understandable the shock that older people feel at the sight of this Beat Generation is, but at its deepest level, not so much repugnance at the facts, as it is distress at the attitudes which move it”. Only a few critics have paid their attention to the Beat Generation. So few critical works in Chinese on the Beats Generation is available and most of critical works I have found are in English and most of them focus on the theme, style and the cultural significance of these two writers. Most critics focus on the theme of rage and rebellion of Beat Generation. From the early 1960s, comments and introductions were made on it. The article roughly classifies the research on it into two periods, the early 1960s to the late 1970s; the late 1970s till now from its social and historical background, its ideology and artistic style and the overall evolution. In The Sixties (2000) Wang Fengzhen said “On the Road was the book that most motivated dissatisfaction with the atmosphere of unquestioning acceptance that stifled the sixties”.
It’s no exaggeration that the writing style of the Beat writers, namely spontaneous writing, is their label. Critics focus more of their attention on this aspect. Wen Chun’an said: “There are several book-length works dealing with this writing style of Beat Generation”. Poetics of Jack Kerouac, David Carter and Allen Ginsberg’s spontaneous mind are two typical monographs. Wu Xiangyi’s evaluation of “spontaneity” of From the Life without Future to the Ruin of Kerouac is “the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis can not go” (2001). This paper is based on the study of literature and all kinds of comments in the literature field, No matter spirit, no matter behaviors, it supports more details of the Beats Generation that people can know about the Beat Generation more clearly.
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