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Abstract of Claudia Gottschall's thesis
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Unspeakable Visions: Beat Consciousness and its Textual Representation (Abstract)

by Claudia Gottschall?
University of Oregon

This study explores the Beats' appropriation of Zen Buddhism into Western culture and its structures of signification. Surfacing in the late 1940s, the Beat Movement reacted against and resisted the standardized and mechanized post-war American culture that led to the alienation of the individual and to an ideology of political supremacy. The Beats appropriated Zen in order to challenge the suppressive power structures of American culture and to propose an alternative vision of a free and unlimited individual.

Chapters I-III provide a theoretical framework for the following discussion of Beat fiction. Chapter I analyzes the post-World War II American political and cultural landscape which shaped the visions of the Beat Movement. Chapter II explores the relationship of Zen to Western rationality, and Chapter III compares the non-discursivity of Zen and its emphasis on meditation and silence to the compulsive discursivity of Western culture.

Chapters IV-VI explore the influence of Zen on the works of Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, and Tom Robbins. Kerouac's appropriation of Zen is highly cerebral and therefore remains limited by the differentiation of discursive structures. Brautigan uses Zen to introduce the elements of silence and indifference into his fiction. Robbins's fiction illustrates the mind of the Zen lunatic and counters stasis and opposition through motion and harmony.

Dissertation Abstracts International? 54/09A
March 1994: 3435A
Order Number: DA9405177



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