The Beat Generation In Jack Kerouac's On The Road

The Beat Generation, a literary and artistic movement that emerged in the United States in the late 1940s, after the Second World War and in the early days of the Cold War, owes its name to street slang. The term "beat" (borrowed from street jargon, and meaning down and out, poor or homeless) perpetuated the romantic, bohemian myth of the “lost generation.” The Franco-Canadian writer Jack Kerouac, whose novel On the Road (1957) contributed to giving the movement its mythical aura, added a contemplative subtlety to the term. In "beat", he said, we should also hear the word "beatitude". The Beat Generation thus nurtured a profound attachment to nature and shamanic spiritualties, seeing humankind as an integral part of the cosmos. The Beats were also attracted to the rhythm of jazz, the music organically linked to the movement, through the figures of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others.
Towards the end of the decade, Paris was the chosen venue in Europe for this essentially nomadic movement; between 1957 and 1963, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Brion Gysin, and other American artists and writers lived intermittently in the so-called “Beat Hotel”, at 9 Rue Gitle-Cœur. They made contact with French artists and poets Bernard Heidsieck, Gherasim Luca and Henri Michaux, and with Jean-Jacques Lebel (one of the most active proponents of Beat culture in France) acting as