The Beat Chaplinists

Abstract

This chapter will discuss a select group of Beat artists, who affiliated themselves with Chaplin and his persona in their work. Many identified with Chaplin the man’s political problems and subsequently attached themselves to the Little Tramp as a sort of symbol of the Beat philosophy and lifestyle. Some, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Kaufman in particular, identified with many of the general attributes of the character, having experienced abandonment, poverty, isolation and/or mental illness in their early lives. This chapter’s investigation will move organically through the period, noting works in which Chaplin or his persona appears, while privileging neither the work nor the author, in order to present a clearer picture of the role the counterculture played in Chaplin’s post-exile resurgence in America.