By Ayesha Begum, Senior Editor
Known for creating the world’s first revolution and hailing one of the most hated men in the world, America brewed one of the lesser known literary revolutions in history that revolved around sexual liberation, hallucinogenic drugs and rejection of any form of social conformity in a chaotic frenzy between 1955 to 1962.
The not-so-renowned Beat Generation was first conjured up in 1945 when a young Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were admiring the Romantics and came across “The New Vision” which was inspired by William Butler Yeats’ “Vision”. From this moment onwards, Kerouac and Ginsberg began to devise core beliefs and ideology which would be ingrained into the movement.
Similar to all friendship groups made up of the bestest of friends, the Beat Generation also had a backstory on how they all met. The initial group consisted of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs who all met in the neighbourhood near to Columbia University in Manhattan in the mid-40s. Gregory Corso joined the group after a visit in Greenwich Village (New York City), and Hobert Hunke later joined after being found hanging around Times Square. Now armed with an alliance, the Beats voyaged to San Francisco in order to expand their group and along the way, they met Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch; and so formed the first wave of the Beat Generation and Beat poetry.
Despite drawing up their own ideas and creating a new form of literature, to an extent, the Beat Generation was also heavily influenced by previous literary works and poets. As mentioned prior, the Romantics and Romanticism as a whole concept played a heavy role in Beat poetry as several of the Beat poets claimed that Romantic poets such as Percy Shelley and William Blake had large influences upon their own work. Besides these Romantic influences, Beat poetry was also influenced by surrealism and the American Transcendental Movement, which included the works of authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman, in particular, held great prestige within the Beat poets as he as often known as the ‘father of free verse’ and often times, he himself opposed the traditional forms and ‘rules’ of poetry- something that the Beat Generation heavily emphasised as rejection of all forms of conformity, whether it be societal or in literature, was encouraged.
Although the Beat Generation is one of the lesser known literary revolutions, it could be argued that it holds the greatest value. The Beats sought to make their readers face reality and see the wrongdoing of people in society- instead of just portraying the good and positive things, the Beats also divulged in the bad aspects of society, which is something that sets them apart from many of their predecessors.
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