Arhiva ROGOVEANU Raluca
Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii “Ovidius” Constanţa nr.20 / 2009
ROGOVEANU RALUCA - Glancing at Deforming Mirrors : The Mad Artists of the Beat Generation
(pag. 83-95)
Converting their life experiences into art and drawing artistic energies from mundane activities, the Beat artists imagined a cultural project in which life and art became conjoined aspects, inseparable coordinates of a continuum. This essay analyzes one of the forms of subversion employed by the artists of the Beat Generation in their opposition to the imposed conformity of the 1950: the cultivation of self-assumed madness. The analysis considers both the personal biographies and the artistic productions of three key representatives of the Beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Started as a personal performance echoing the sense of loss and general moral dissolution, madness is sometimes simulated, but in most cases lived with a tragic sense of commitment. Apart from loneliness and neurosis, madness also engenders an emancipated behavior, meant to connect the individual to the universal. The violence of madness, though emerging out of crisis and negation, offers alternative solutions and negative challenges to a corrupted self and national ethos.
Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii “Ovidius” Constanţa nr.19 / 2008
ROGOVEANU RALUCA - Writing Beat in Bebop Rhythms
(pag. 103-106)
This article analyzes the relations between the prose discourse of the Beat generation writers and bebop jazz; it also identifies the cultural affinities between Charlie Parker's jazz and Jack Kerouac's prose. The complexity of both forms of expression lies in their duplicitous nature. Entertaining and subversive at the same time, the beat /bebop discourse relies on free improvisation and spontaneous rhythmic associations of words. Both deal with individual and collective resistance forms, transcending the ethical and rejecting social and political coercion.