Title: The Beat Generation: A Rhetoric of Negation Abstract approved: Redacted for Privacy

movement in the 1950's. Comprised of nomadic writers, poets, actors, musicians, and artists, the Beat movement represented no systematic philosophy and its most dis-tinguishing characteristic was its apolitical disengage-ment from society. The Beats offered no substantive alternatives to the existing social order, but they sus-tained themselves as a collective literary body for nearly fifteen years by a shared opposition to society. Quint-essentially an anti-movement, the Beat Generation held a fragile power. By dropping out of society and saying "No " to the social hierarchy, the Beats raised important questions about the relation of the individual to society. At the leading edge of the Beat Generation were the writers who voiced and penned the movement's refusal to participate in what was perceived as a hypocritical socia