Allen Ginsberg’s "Howl" : a literary and cultural analysis

Abstract

The idea for this Bachelor thesis was born out of interest towards the literary movement of The Beat Generation in the United States of America, with special focus on the figure of Allen Ginsberg and his famous poem Howl. We would like to explore their position in the literary establishment of the 1950s’ America, taking into consideration their evolution as a countercultural literary movement, and to look more specifically at the case of Howl. Described as “the voice of a generation” and “the poem that changed America”, Howl actually became the image and insignia of a generation which, shaped and influenced by the direct effects of the Lost Generation a couple of decades earlier on culture and consumerism, rebelled against the establishment and motivated the great social change that the world, and particularly the United States of America, experienced from the decade of the sixties onwards. Its effect and significance on American and even global history is undeniable, still when some question its literary value. For once, a literary product trespassed the boundaries of the literary world, becoming an extraordinary social and cultural weapon on whose base many laid the foundations of their personal revolution.