The Nexus of Hermeneutics and Aesthetics: A Structuralist Reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper examines Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems from Roland Barthes's structuralist perspective. Structuralism is a text-centred school of criticism which looks at the general laws and conventions that govern the various structures of a text especially as they relate to each other. The basis of structuralism is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation, but in the context of the larger structures they are made of,hence, the term, structuralism. Essentially, this concern with structures cuts across disciplines such as Physics, Biology, Mathematics and Psychology, but what structuralism (in literature) has in common with these other areas of structural concern is an interest in whole rather than in the parts. This is in tandem with Claude Levi-Strauss's structural analysis of myths as a system of relations. The study adopts the Barthesian codal approach in the analysis and interpretation of the poems. From the analysis, the paper finds a yearning for rehabilitation, reintegration, transcendence and order on the part of the members of the Beat Generation which the entire poems centre on as opposed to damnation, rejection and excommunication as well as disbandment which ordinarily remain their ultimate lot even as it upholds structuralism as one of the invaluable tools of literary critical analysis, whose methodology shows the process of decoding a text in relationship to the codes provided by the structure of language itself.
Downloads
Article Details
Issue
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
All materials deposited in the Afrischolar Discovery Repository are made openly available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise indicated.
Under this license, users are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial use
These freedoms are granted provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is included, and any changes made are clearly indicated. Attribution must not suggest endorsement by the author(s) or the repository.
Authors retain full copyright of their work while granting Afrischolar Discovery Repository a non-exclusive license to store, preserve, and disseminate the content for academic and public use.
Users must not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from exercising the rights permitted by the license.
Where third-party content is included, users are responsible for ensuring compliance with the applicable licensing terms for such materials.
By submitting content to the Afrischolar Discovery Repository, contributors affirm that they have the right to distribute their work under the CC BY 4.0 license.
For full license details, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
How to Cite
References
Abrams, Meyer. A Glossary of Literary Terms (10" Ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print Albrecht, Julie. "Classical Myth in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" http://www.web.mit.edu/../VanEngen.pdf. Retrieved on 4th July, 2017.
Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (2nd Edition).Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Print
Barthes, Roland.SZ (Systematic Analysis of Balzac's Surrazine"). New York: Hill Wang, 1974. Print Breslin, Philips. "The Psycho-Political Muse:
American Poetry since the Fifties". http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g-l/ginsberg/howl. Retrieved on July 5, 2017. Web
Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1994. Print
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2001. Print Campbell, Johnson. This is the Beat Generation. New York: Penguin, 2001. Print
Charters, Allen.Beat Down to Your Soul: What was the Beat Generation? New York: Penguin, 2001. Print. Claude, Levi-Strauss. Structural Anthropology. New York, Basic Books Publishers, 1963. Print.
Dobie, Ann. (Ed.)Theory and Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956. Print. Habib, Rafey. Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.
Jannise, Claytone. "Moloch and Destruction in Allen Ginsberg's How!". http//www.biography.com.people//allen-gins. Retrieved on 5th June, 2017. Web
Leitch, Vincent (Ed). The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 2001. Print
Mowah, Frank. A Structuralist Discourse on African literature. Ibadan: Stirling- HordenPublishers, 1997. Print Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. (Ed.). Trans.
Peter Owens, London: Fontana Books, 1974. Print 126 Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. Yale: Yale University Press. 1977, Print Waugh, Patricia (Ed.). Literary Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print