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On the Road to the Market : Kerouac, Revisions, and Market ForcesKilic, Adam January 2015 (has links)
The publication of the thitherto unavailable original scroll of On the Road in 2007 marked a decisive point for Beat scholarship. Enabling line-by-line comparison, the two versions could suddenly be placed under proper scrutiny, and Kerouac’s revisions set up against the established myth of the novel’s creation. How should we understand the revisions? To supply a contribution to an answer, this paper will map the artistic as well as personal trajectory of Jack Kerouac throughout the 1950s. Basing my analysis largely on correspondence, I will show how Kerouac constantly oscillated between different positions and attitudes within the space of literary production. The essay will argue that Kerouac’s pursuit of literary prestige, stood side by side with the always-present alternative of satisfying the demands of the large audience. If we add to this Kerouac’s obsession with his imagined audience it becomes clear that his final work resulted from more than his own aesthetic preferences. Devoting a section to his aesthetic program, I will explore to what extent editorial revisions, even seemingly minor ones, compromised his original text in significant ways. Keeping in mind his erratic trajectory, and adding to it Warren French’s complementary observation that Kerouac’s personality was violently split, will allow us to identify an equally contradictory literary self-expression. Thus comparing On the Road with Visions of Cody (the latter emerged through the revisions of the former), Kerouac’s literary expression can be said to manifest itself in two fundamentally different ways. In Road as a reifying gesture that mystifies man’s connection with the earth, and, in Visions as an opposite gesture of dereification that seeks to disclose the source of man-made products that have become reified. Proposing that the autobiographical component of Kerouac’s writing is essentially a gesture of dereification, the essay will argue that editorial revisions of such works inescapably destabilize the unity between experienced reality and textual representation.
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Towards a Consummated Life: Kenneth Burke's Concept of Consummation as Critical Conversation and CatharsisBacalski, Cherise Marie 14 March 2013 (has links) (PDF)
Consummation was the one term about which Kenneth Burke wasn't particularly long-winded - odd considering his claim that it was the apex of his theory of form. Perhaps Burke never explained exactly what consummation was because he himself was never clear on the subject, as he told John Woodcock in an interview toward the end of his career. Burke began conceptualizing his theory of form early on - in his 20s - and published it in his first critical book, Counter-Statement, in 1931. At that time, Burke's theory of form had already taken one evolutionary step - from self-expression, with the focus on the artist, to communication, with the focus on the psychology of the reader. Communication was to Burke an "arousing and fulfilling of desires." However, by the 60s, Burke introduced us to a new term which he only used a handful of times in his entire corpus: consummation. This paper attempts to define consummation by exploring Burke's theory of form and looking to his correspondences with friends and scholars. It offers two answers: first, consummation is the act of a reader responding to a writer in critical conversation; second, consummation is the ultimate cathartic achievement. Both play an important civic role. Using current science regarding the gut in connection with emotional purgation, this paper treats seriously Burke's essay "The Thinking of the Body (Comments on the Imagery of Catharsis in Literature)" and his ideas regarding the "Demonic Trinity": micturition, defecation, and parturition, explaining Burkean catharsis as it differs from, deepens, and extends Aristotelian catharsis. What can we learn from what Burke meant by consummation? That the symbolic world is much more significant to our survival than we may realize. As the world of scientific motion advanced rapidly during Burke's lifetime, he began to lose hope that symbolic action could keep up with it. We can see how important poetry and the symbolic motive was for him; he seemed to think it was a matter of life and death. This paper explores what it meant for Burke to seek a consummated life, and the implications that held for him and for us. In the end, the paper posits the importance of catharsis to society in terms of war and peace.
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