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Allen Ginsberg’s Blakean Albion

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 16:20 authored by Luke Walker
Focusing on a selection of poems written during Allen Ginsberg’s visits to Britain between 1958 and 1979, an attempt is made to show how Ginsberg’s British poetry might productively be read in the context of William Blake’s mythopoetic system, particularly in so far as it relates to the Blakean figures of Albion and Jerusalem. Ginsberg’s poetic vision of a Blakean Albion is revealed to be more complex, and more problematic, than might be supposed. This is partly because Ginsberg’s own position is conflicted; as a key representative of American Beat poetry and later of American counterculture, he is nonetheless engaged in these ‘British’ poems in re-envisioning and reshaping Blake’s Albion. Such nationalist tensions are not, however, restricted to Ginsberg’s work; they can also be linked to similar conflicts between nationalism and internationalism which already exist within Blake’s own vision of Albion.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Comparative American Studies

ISSN

1477-5700

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

3

Volume

11

Page range

227-242

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-11-18

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    University of Sussex (Publications)

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