Research Guides: Howl: Critical Articles

Articles

"Personal suffering and social criticism in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and A. Ginsberg’s Howl : Implications for social psychiatry" by Moritz E Wigand and et al.
Background: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and A. Ginsberg’s Howl are two landmark poems of the 20th century which have a unique way of dealing with emotional suffering. Aims: (a) To explore the interplay between emotional suffering, conflicting relationships and societal perceptions; (b) to show the therapeutic effect of the writing process; (c) to analyse the portrayal of ‘madness’; and (d) to discuss, in contemporary psychiatric terms, the ‘solutions’ offered by the poets. Method: Qualitative research with a narrative, hermeneutic approach. Results: Against the background of wartime/genocide and postwar disillusionment, close relationships are projected onto societal perceptions. Concepts of (self-)control, compassion, empowerment and self-efficacy are offered as solutions to overcome feelings of despair. Conclusion: In a time of perceived societal and environmental crises, both poems help us understand people’s fears and how to counteract them. Besides biological approaches, the narrative approach to the suffering human being has not lost its significance.
"Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl': A Reading" by Gregory Stephenson
In the following excerpt, Stephenson argues that Ginsberg's focus in "Howl" is transcendence in contemporary life.
"Allen Ginsberg: The Whole Man In" by Geoffrey Thurley
In the essay excerpted below, Thurley examines the poetic characteristics and influences of “Howl” and discusses the poem's mechanics.
"Ginsberg's Inferno: Dante and "Howl"" by Jeffrey Meyers
In "Howl" Ginsberg places his own revolutionary poetry of suffering--his portrayal of outcast homosexuals and drug addicts, the insane and suicidal--in opposition to the traditional values of society. At the same time he uses Dante's scholastic philosophy, fearful punishments and circles of Hell as the foundation of his own poem, to heighten yet control the personal guilt and terror in his frenzied lamentation. Ginsberg, a star performer of his own work, emphasized the agonized howl in "Howl" As the chanted poem leaped off the page, he made his ecstatic audience understand how Dante's Inferno deepens the intellectual content, tightens the structure and enhances the theme of his poignant poem.

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