Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Date of Graduation
5-10-2024
Publish
yes
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
Department of English
Advisor(s)
Brian Flota
Allison Fagan
Brooks Hefner
Abstract
The Beat Generation was a countercultural literary movement in the 1950s and 60s that was started in New York City by the writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Following the decline of the Beat Generation in the mid-1960s, the Hippie Movement rose to prominence in part as a response to the pessimism of the Beat Generation. In spite of this, the hippies shared many of the countercultural sentiments embraced by the Beats. To demonstrate the influence the Beat Generation had on the Hippie Movement, I analyzed the song lyrics of bands from the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene which developed out of the Hippie Movement. In doing so, I found countercultural themes similar to those expressed in Beat literature as well as explicit references to the Beats. I also argue in this thesis that the Beat Generation and the Hippie Movement helped popularize counterculturalism to the point where things once considered countercultural, such as psychedelics, non-heteronormativity, and environmentalism, are now more widely accepted.
Recommended Citation
Weaver, Evan, "The beat generation’s influence on the hippie movement and psychedelic rock" (2024). Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current. 169.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029/169
