The beats generation slides(1)
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The Beat Generation were a group of American writers who emerged in the 1950s in response to World War II and rejection of prevailing middle-class values. Key members included Allen Ginsberg, whose poem Howl criticized restrictive American assumptions, and Gary Snyder, whose work resisted cultural authority. The Beat poets wrote in a spontaneous style with free verse and sought to bring poetry to the streets. Their work was influenced by Romantic poets and jazz music and explored themes of politics, Buddhism, and social commentary.
The beats generation slides(1)
- 3. Table of Contents: • Introduction • Characteristics • Key Poets & their Works • Influence • Contribution • Criticism
- 4. also known as the beat movement, were a group of American writers who emerged in the 1950s.
- 5. 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.
- 6. Most Influential Members of Beat Generation:
- 7. 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.
- 8. 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.
- 9. Example
- 10. Jack Kerouac Lawrence Ferlinghetti Gregory Corso Allen Ginsberg William Burroughs The main actors:
- 11. 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.
- 12. 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.
- 13. Howl
- 14. • Ginsberg provides perhaps the most comprehensive diagnosis of America's social and political psyche. • "Howl" (1956),though not based on specific socio-political situations, still provides strong social commentary.
- 15. 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.
- 17. Gregory Corso • Corso’s "anarchic style (is) similar to Ginsberg's, though his favorite poet is Shelley, a Romantic poet who was much too flowery for most Beats.” • Corso equates the Bomb with various incarnations of the godhead, speaking of it in religious terms and assigning it cosmic 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.
- 19. 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 found the City Lights Bookstore in 1953.
- 20. • His Beat poetry is often concerned with politics and social issues and it is deeply infused in the tradition. • Although, his poetry is autobiographical but it is not excessively self-contained.
- 22. 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.
- 23. 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.
- 24. 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.
- 25. Thank You