At last we got the tape on right and were able to catch Artaud’s magnetic mix of schizo sound poetry and sublime antichristian, antimilitaristic and anticapitalist imprecatory hollering in classical French. Burroughs was visibly impressed. As for Ginsberg he borrowed the tape from me, made several copies and mailed them in the U.S. to Judith Malina and Julian Beck, to LeRoy Jones (later named Amiri Baraka) and to Michael McClure. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Artaud rhizom crossed the Atlantic and spilled over into the American counter-culture. --- Jean-Jacques Lebel


In the years following WWII, a broad array of writers and artists gathered together in a variety of settings to create and perform revelatory artworks. Along the way, they created a major subculture movement, deemed “Beat”, which has reverberated across disciplines and borders ever since. This disparate and diverse group of young artists rejected prevailing American norms by embarking upon spiritual and creative quests that were inspired by English Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, Black culture, Buddhism, Taoism, psychoanalysis and, as we’ll explore with particular ardor, French modernism. Sexually liberated (mostly) and inspired by copious amounts of intoxicating substances and approaches, the Beats created influential explicit experiences that challenged economic materialism and promoted individual and collective spiritual quests.
We will focus on Beat Writers’ connection to French literary traditions, and discuss the role that writers such as William Burroughs, Diane Di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, and Jack Kerouac played in bringing French modernism to America. Several Beat writers were Francophiles and conversant to varying degrees with French language and culture, by upbringing (Ferlinghetti and Kerouac), or by wide-ranging exploration of French literature. One of the crucial inspirations to this France/US overlap was the period of time that some of the Beats spent in the so-called “Beat Hotel”, an experience that we’ll re-create in this course.
In September of 1957, Gregory Corso was introduced to a rundown Parisian hotel by painter and resident Guy Harloff. Court cases involving Ginsberg and Burroughs, coupled with the “on the road” wanderlust, inspired Allen Ginsberg and his lover, Peter Orlovsky to travel to Paris, followed by William S. Burroughs, Derek Raymond, and Harold Norse. Sinclair Beiles followed soon after, and this little hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur became an epicenter for new creative work that was shaped and inspired by French literature and culture including the poetic films of Carné and Cocteau, and, especially, the poetry / novels of Guillaume Apollinaire; Charles Baudelaire; Stéphane Mallarmé; Arthur Rimbaud; Tristan Tzara; André Breton; Jean Genet; Blaise Cendrars; Antonin Artaud; Henri Michaux; Louis-Ferdinand Céline; Marcel Proust; Jean-Paul Sartre; Jacques Prévert; Henri Michaux; Lautréamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) and others. By the end of this course, students will have had a deep dive into Beat worlds, and the French modernist works that helped bring them to life.

COURSE FORMAT
This is an interactive online seminar course that meets weekly over 8 weeks. Live online sessions will use the zoom platform. Weekly reading or other forms of materials may be assigned. Weekly sessions will be recorded and available for registered participants to access throughout the course.
There are no papers or grades. This course does not offer any credits or certificates. This course is intended for learning for the love of learning.

COURSE MATERIALS
This course will have all reading materials supplied by the instructor. There will be selection of optional reading materials for any who want to peruse more background material.
Registrants will receive access to the course website and the zoom links about two weeks before the course starts.

COURSE CANCELLATION POLICY
Registrants can cancel and receive a full refund up to September 22. After September 22, there will be no refunds issued.
Yale Alumni College courses are subject to schedule changes as well as cancellations. If Yale Alumni College must cancel any course prior to its start due to low enrollment, you will be notified of this by the cancellation date. Upon cancellation of a course, registrants may transfer their registration to another available course or have the registration fee fully refunded.

In the event of a disruption to the original course schedule, including but not limited to; Professor absence, hazardous weather conditions, or local travel restrictions, Yale Alumni College will do its best to reschedule the missed class for the week immediately following the original end date at the same course time and day.