学过英美文学的请进
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Beats" redirects here. For "beats" in music, see Beat (music).
The Beat Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired (later sometimes called "beatniks"). Central elements of "Beat" culture included experimentation with drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, and a rejection of materialism.
The major works of Beat writing are Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957).[1] Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize what could be published in the United States. On the Road transformed Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady into a youth-culture hero. The members of the Beat Generation quickly developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.
The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Later, the central figures (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up together in San Francisco in the mid-1950s where they met and became friends with figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
The language and topics of beat writing pushed the boundaries of acceptability in the conformist 1950's: they often openly discussed drug use, sexuality (in particular homosexuality) and criminal behavior without condemnation, and sometimes with approval. The first "Beat" work to gain nationwide attention was Ginsberg's Howl: its graphic sexual language language led to an obscenity-trial which helped fuel its fame. One of the most enringly famous "Beat" works, Kerouac's On the Road (written in 1951) was not published until 1957, capitalizing on the fame brought by the Howl obscenity-trial, though with some objectional material edited out. Burroughs' magnum opus, Naked Lunch, which was much more graphic than Howl, also went to trial for obscenity after its 1962 American publication. These trials helped to establish that if anything was deemed to have literary value it was no longer considered obscene.[2][page needed] Thomas Pynchon cites Kerouac and the Beat writers as one proof that there was another kind of language that could be used in writing: "The effect was exciting, liberating, strongly positive." [3]
During the 1960s, the rapidly expanding Beat culture underwent a transformation: the Beat Generation spread and turned into the Counterculture of the 1960s, which was accompanied by a shift in public terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie".
