On the Road to Lost Fathers: Jack Kerouac in a Lacanian Perspective

Tomasz Sawczuk

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783631786819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: French Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The book is the first monograph which examines the correspondences between the oeuvre of Jack Kerouac and the thought of Jacques Lacan, the two apparently incompatible worlds which prove to be complementary when taking a closer look. The study demonstrates a number of points. Firstly, with Jacques Lacan as a silent partner, it helps to better understand why psychoanalysis won Kerouac's enmity in the mid-1950s. It also delves into Lacan's reflections on spontaneous free-association to prove their convergence with Beats' literary tactics. In its final part, by employing Lacanian theory, the book offers an extensive insight into Kerouac's oeuvre to excavate the problematic status of the father figure, a crucial matter not yet given a rigorous critical attention.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright information
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Development of Psychoanalysis in the United States
• 2 Fundamental Lacanian Concepts
• 3 Literary Studies and American Literature: Lacanian Perspectives
• 4 Kerouac and Psychoanalysis in America: Direct Encounters
• 5 The Beat Analyst? Jack Kerouac, Beat Models of Writing, and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Textual Strategies and Comparative Pe spectives
• 6 “[C]‌ome Up to Rivers and Cross Them One Way or Another” – The Town and the City
• 7 “Somewhere Behind Us or In Front of Us in the Huge Night His Father Lay” – On the Road and Visions of Cody
• 8 “If I Were God I’d Have the Word” – Visions of Gerard, Satori in Paris and Vanity of Duluoz
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index