The Beat Generation (various sources):

• "Beat" can mean various things:
  • a beat -- as in a rhythm
  • beaten down -- as in looked down upon by society, or as in trampled by society
  • tired -- as in "I'm beat"
  • "beatnik" -- as in someone who shows a disregard conventions and who engages in social criticism and self-expression
  • "beatify," "beatific," or "beatified," as in showing or producing exalted joy or blessedness; angelic; to make blessedly happy; to proclaim a deceased person to be one of the blessed and thus worthy of public veneration; supreme blessedness or happiness

The Beat Movement (source: Hart):

• A bohemian rebellion against established society which came to prominence about 1956 and had its centers in San Francisco (at the City Lights Bookshop) and in New York City (in Greenwich Village)
• The term "Beat" expressed both exhaustion and beatification in that the writers -- tired of conventional society -- and disgusted by it -- believed that thorough-going disaffiliation from all aspects of the manners and mores of what they saw as a corrupt, crass, commercial world would bring its own kind of blissful illumination -- aided by alcohol and drugs
• Writers of the movement expressed their views in their own "hip" vocabulary, combined with phrases from Buddhism, by which they were influenced -- but there is a personal statement and power that goes beyond this jargon in the works of the leading literary figures of the movement: Ginsberg, Corso, Snyder, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, and Burroughs

The Beats (source: Prentice Hall):

• Anti-establishment -- against traditions and values, both social and literary
• Their quest for self takes one or more of the following forms:
  • The pursuit of euphoria
  • The search for love
  • The seeking of the consolations of religion -- especially Zen Buddhism, Orientalism, etc.
• Charges against the Beats:
  • Primitivism is simply a cover for anti-intellectualism
  • They are so lacking in real ideas -- having only enthusiasm -- that they cannot treat complicated matters
  • Their writing is weakened by uncontrolled exuberance and unfocused sentimentality and that it displays an adolescent faith in unthinking instinct

The Beat Generation (source: A Handbook to Literature):

• A group of poets and novelists of the 1950s and 1960s in romantic rebellion against the culture and value systems of America
• They expressed their revolt through literary works of loose structure and slang diction
• To prevailing "establishment" values, they opposed (proposed?) an anti-intellectual freedom, often associated with religious ecstasy, visionary states, or the effects of drugs
• The group's ideology included some measure of primitivism, Orientalism, experimentation, eccentricity, and reliance on inspiration from modern jazz -- bebop especially -- and from such earlier visionaries as Blake and Whitman