"Blessed Are the Pure of Heart." Variations on Magical Realism in the Beat Generation: Pathways to Critique and Resistance

Abstract

This dissertation explores literary depictions of characters experiencing self discovery as they are presented by three of the writers of the Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, Elise Cowen, and Diane di Prima. Each of the texts--Dr. Sax, Loba, and Cowen's poetry-- demonstrates how disempowered or oppressed characters evolve, learn to define themselves, and discover a truer sense of self during times of war, struggle, conflict or difficulty. The types of oppression the protagonists and speakers face in these texts is wide-ranging and diverse, but magical realism, and variations on the literary themes presented in magical realism, becomes for these writers a weapon their characters employ for critique and for self preservation against the existing social order. Magical elements allow these characters to reflect their realities and--at best--resist those realities. Pan's Labyrinth is presented here as a model for these specific themes -magic as a tool that can empower the disempowered--and as a lens through which the other texts are read and understood.