Beat & beyondmemoir, myth and visual arts in women of the beat generation = Más allá del Beat: memoria, mito y arte visual en las mujeres de la generación beat

Abstract

______________________________________________________________________ Abstract The aim of this dissertation is to reassess the position of women writers within the Beat Generation and re-evaluate their work within (post)Beat - and extra-Beat - literary and artistic discourses. To do so, the dissertation is divided into three main chapters which focus on different themes and, incidentally, on the work of different writers and poets. Chapter two tackles the personal/literary dilemma by analyzing eleven memoirs written by women associated with the Beat Generation. By investigating common themes in the memoirs - namely, writing, gender roles, and connection with the Beat Generation - this chapter situates the women in a specific socio-political and artistic context that was common to the male Beat writers, but also expands the concerns found in the works of the male Beats by dealing with themes such as motherhood, abortion, domesticity or even the responsibility of economically supporting the family. Nevertheless, this chapter goes beyond the personal position or personal experience of these authors by studying the specific use they make of memoir as a genre. Bringing into the fore life-writing studies and feminist reevaluations of the dialogue between genre and gender, this chapter argues for a thoughtful reexamination of the literary and artistic value of the - too-often - discarded memoirs. The third chapter moves on to poetry, specifically to Joanne Kyger's The Tapestry and the Web (1965), Diane di Prima's Loba (1998) and Anne Waldman's The Iovis Trilogy (2011), to examine the way in which these poets revise or appropriate mythological themes, characters and discourses. Kyger, for instance, works directly with Homer's The Odyssey to endow Penelope with a more contemporaneous mindset and space to express herself, while simultaneously keeping her "trapped" within Homer's framework. Di Prima's Loba - written mostly in the mid seventies - resonates more clearly with feminist appropriation of mythological characters as well as with the specific Goddess Movement. The last part of the chapter explores Anne Waldman's deconstruction of the patriarchal myths through the ongoing metaphor of "all is full of Jove" - which alludes to the omnipresent and almighty patriarch, Zeus. In addition to the focus on mythology as a fictive construction, these three poetry collections reevaluate the position of women within the epic genre. The last chapter focuses on visual arts to counteract the visual representation of women in the Beat Generation generated by the mainstream media, and situates their writing in a multi- and trans-media context that places it at the forefront of 1960s artistic and literary experimentation. The first part of the chapter delineates the actual involvement of poets with film and video as, mainly, mediums from which to expand their poetry and artistic vision. The last part focuses on the connection between ruth weiss's poetry and the visual art world in two different ways: the influence of visual arts like painting, sculpture and lightshows on her poetry, and the actual expansion of her poetry into other media such as painting, theater and film. The conclusion stresses the necessity of placing these women's poetry and art in the foreground of academic and scholar discourses of the Beat Generation. The approach adopted avoids a comparison with the work of male writers of the generation, which allows for a much freer space from which to analyze their literature outside of a victimized position, while it also establishes the self-sufficiency and aesthetic and thematic relevance of their work. To do so, the dissertation uses as a methodological framework cultural and gender studies, as well as feminist criticism. The formal analysis, in addition, is informed by thematic and formal readings of the literary and visual representation of gender and sexuality developed by feminist and queer criticism.