beat generation, term applied to certain American artists and writers who were popular during the 1950s. Essentially anarchic, members of the beat generation rejected traditional social and artistic forms. The beats sought immediate expression in multiple, intense experiences and beatific illumination like that of some Eastern religions (e.g., Zen Buddhism). In literature they adopted rhythms of simple American speech and of bop and progressive jazz. Among those associated with the movement were the novelists Jack Kerouac and Chandler Brossard, numerous poets (e.g., Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso), and others, many of whom worked in and around San Francisco. Perhaps the only true nihilist of the group was William S. Burroughs. During the 1960s "beat" ideas and attitudes were absorbed by other cultural movements, and those who practiced something akin to the "beat" lifestyle were called "hippies."

Generation of '98, Spanish literary and cultural movement in the first two decades of the 20th cent. It was so named by Azorín (see Martínez Ruiz, José) in 1913 to designate a group of young writers who, in the face of defeat (1898) in the Spanish-American War, proclaimed a moral and cultural rebirth for Spain. Azorín's original list included Valle Inclán, Unamuno, Benavente y Martínez, Baroja y Nessi, Ramiro de Maeztu, Darío, and Azorín himself. It has since been emended to include Ganivet and Antonio Machado, as well as Ortega y Gasset, Pérez de Ayala, and Marañón. Darío is more often considered as the founder of modernismo. The group was concerned with defining the essential quality of Spain, studying its history and culture. In the austere life of Castile many of them discovered the key to the essence of Hispanicism. While they attacked aestheticism and the current adulation of the Austrian satiric poet Karl Kraus, they also represented cosmopolitan trends, including political liberalism. They greatly influenced the work of later Spanish writers.