Table of Contents:

• Introduction

• Characteristics

• Key Poets & their Works

• Influence

• Contribution

• Criticism

also known as the beat movement,

were a group of American writers who

emerged in the 1950s.

Introduction

• The Beat Movement was considered a response to World War II.

• People rejected the prevailing American middle-class values and

materialism of modern society, throwing out the old rules of literature,

music, taboos and religion.

• Originality and individuality came with uniform style of seedy dress,

manners, and “hip” vocabulary borrowed from jazz musicians, with no

perfection of style.

Most Influential Members of Beat Generation:

Characteristics

• Beat refers to pure and beautiful, or exhausted and trodden down. The

original coinage of “Beat” was meant to imply a people beaten down and

walked over.

• They advocated personal release, purification, and illumination through

drugs, jazz, or the disciplines of Zen Buddhism.

• Politics also factored into much of Beat poetry.

Characteristics

• Literature became more bold, straightforward, and expressive than anything

before.

• They sought to bring poetry “back to the streets” to the people.

• The verse was frequently free, chaotic and unstructured, liberally sprinkled with

obscenities, in a spontaneous, creative style.

• They believed in composition in which the writer put down his thoughts and

feelings without plan or revision - to convey the immediacy of individual

experience.

Example

Jack Kerouac

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Gregory Corso

Allen Ginsberg

William Burroughs

The main actors:

Key Poets of Beat Movement:

• Allen Ginsberg (Howl-1956)

• Gary Synder (Riprap- 1959)

• Gregory Corso (Bomb- 1958)

• Lawrence Ferlinghetti ( I Am Waiting)

The primary focus of these poets were on specific issues of contemporary social and political interest.

Allen Ginsberg

• Allen Ginsberg was a high school teacher, poet and a moderate Jewish

Socialist. His Beat poetry marks the transition from modernism to

postmodernism.

• His famous poem Howl is an outcry against the restrictive, conventional

assumptions of middle-class America.

Howl

• Ginsberg provides perhaps the most comprehensive diagnosis ofAmerica's social and political psyche.

• "Howl" (1956),though not based on specific socio-politicalsituations, still provides strong social commentary.

Gary Synder

• Bruce Cook said it well:

“If Ginsberg is the Beat movement's Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder is the Henry David

Thoreau.”

• His Beat poetry is marked as a clear resistance against cultural authority.

• In Riprap, Japan becomes a symbol of poet’s belief in society that isn’t consumer-obsessed as America.

Gregory Corso

• Corso’s "anarchic style (is) similar to Ginsberg's, thoughhis favorite poet is Shelley, a Romantic poet who wasmuch too flowery for most Beats.”

• Corso equates the Bomb with various incarnations of thegodhead, speaking of it in religious terms and assigning itcosmic powers of creation and destruction.

• Corso also deplores war as man's deadliest enemy, and he considers the abuse of power as an egregious offense.

• Corso's vision of a pure, unstained America, and his faith in a re-awakening of consciousness are the hall- marks of his remarkable Beat poetry.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

• He served the U.S Navy in WWII as a ship's commander.• In 1951, he taught French in an adult education program

until he met Peter D. Martin and the pair went on to foundthe City Lights Bookstore in 1953.

• His Beat poetry is often concerned with politics and social issuesand it is deeply infused in the tradition.

• Although, his poetry is autobiographical but it is not excessivelyself-contained.

Influence on The Beat Generation

• Romantic poets were major influences on the Beat aesthetics, especially Percy

Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau.

• The Beats were closely connected with poets of the San Francisco Renaissance

Movement, such as Kenneth Rexroth and Robert Duncan.

• They were also influenced by jazz music, which was still seen as somewhat

outrageous.

• Buddhism particularly was significant to many of the Beat poets and it figured into

much of their work.

CONTRIBUTION OF BEAT POETS

• The Beat Generation made a long-term impact on the composition of

contemporary American society.

• The Beats propelled thought of conservationism and environmentalism

into the mainstream.

• The Beat Generation also encouraged the Black Mountain poets, so

named as they wrote for the Black Mountain Review.

CRITICISM

• Mainstream America was shocked by their invented sexual deviancy and

illegal drug use.

• The academic community derided the Beats as anti-intellectual and

unrefined.

• Established poets and novelists looked down upon the carefree attitude of

Beat literature.

• Hence, the Beat Generation faded from view as quickly as it appeared.

Thank You