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THE NOVELS and the POETRY of PHILIP LARKIN by JOAN SHEILA MAYNE B . a . , U N I V E R S I T Y of H U L L , 1962 a THESIS SUBMITT
THE NOVELS AND THE POETRY OF PHILIP LARKIN by JOAN SHEILA MAYNE B.A., University of Hull, 1962 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF M .A. in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1968 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his represen• tatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of English The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada April 26, 1968 ii THESIS ABSTRACT Philip Larkin has been considered primarily in terms of his contribution to the Movement of the Fifties; this thesis considers Larkin as an artist in his own right. His novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and his first volume of poetry, The North Ship, have received very little critical attention. Larkin's last two volumes of poetry, The Less Deceived and The Whitsun Weddings, have been considered as two very similar works with little or no relation to his earlier work. This thesis is an attempt to demonstrate that there is a very clear line of development running through Larkin's work, in which the novels play as important a part as the poetry. -
Rhyme, Meter, and Closure in Philip Larkin's •Œan Arundel Tomb"
Studies in English, New Series Volume 6 Article 26 1988 Rhyme, Meter, and Closure in Philip Larkin's “An Arundel Tomb" Elizabeth Gargano-Blair Iowa City Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studies_eng_new Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Gargano-Blair, Elizabeth (1988) "Rhyme, Meter, and Closure in Philip Larkin's “An Arundel Tomb"," Studies in English, New Series: Vol. 6 , Article 26. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studies_eng_new/vol6/iss1/26 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Studies in English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in English, New Series by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Gargano-Blair: Rhyme, Meter, and Closure in Philip Larkin's “An Arundel Tomb" RHYME, METER, AND CLOSURE IN PHILIP LARKIN’S “AN ARUNDEL TOMB” Elizabeth Gargano-Blair Iowa City In his 1965 preface to The North Ship, Philip Larkin names three major poets who influenced his “undergraduate” and “post-Oxford” work: W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and W. B. Yeats. He goes on to describe Yeats as the most potent, and potentially destructive, of these influences: “I spent the next three years trying to write like Yeats, not because I liked his personality or understood his ideas but out of infatuation with his music (to use the word I think Vernon [Watkins] used). In fairness to myself it must be admitted that it is a particularly potent music, pervasive as garlic, and has ruined many a better talent.”1 At a time when many young poets were resisting this “dangerous” music, fearful of losing poetic sense in mere sound, one challenge was to find new approaches to the use of rhyme and meter. -
We Met at the End of the Party’
APPENDIX: ‘Be my Valentine this Monday’ and ‘We met at the end of the party’ These poems came to light in 2002, as a result of a complicated sequence of events. Following Monica Jones’s death on 15 February 2001, the staff of the Brynmor Jones Library, Hull, cleared 105 Newland Avenue of Larkin’s remaining books and manuscripts. The Philip Larkin Society then purchased the remaining non-literary items: furniture, pictures and ornaments. These were removed in late 2001 and early 2002, and are now on long-term loan to the Hull Museums Service and the East Riding Museum Service. Both searches missed a small dark red ‘©ollins Ideal 468’ hard-backed manu- script notebook which had slipped behind the drawers of a bedside cabinet. This cabinet was removed by the house-clearer with the final debris, and subse- quently fell into the hands of a local man, Chris Jackson, who contacted the Larkin Society. I confirmed the authenticity of the book in a brief meeting with Mr Jackson in the Goose and Granite public house in Hull on 17.vii.2002. The notebook seems initially to have been intended for ‘Required Writing’, which Larkin wished to keep separate from the drafts in his workbooks proper. The first eleven sides are occupied by pencil drafts of ‘Bridge for the Living’, dated between 30 May 1975 and 27 July 1975. These are followed by notes on Thomas Hardy and other topics. Seven months later, however, Larkin used the book again, this time for more personal writing. The central pages were left blank but on the final five sides he wrote pencil drafts, dated between 7 February 1976 and 21 February 1976, of ‘Morning at last: there in the snow’, ‘Be my Valentine this Monday’ and ‘We met at the end of the party’. -
Larkin's Springboards
European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.6, No.1, pp.53-71, February 2018 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) LARKIN’S SPRINGBOARDS: THE POET IN THE MAKING Dr. Milton Sarkar Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, APC College, Calcutta, West Bengal, India ABSTRACT: Philip Larkin is a key figure in the post-war British poetry. This “effective unofficial Laureate of the post-1945 England” remains the “central figure in British Poetry over the last twenty years.” Larkin’s reputation rose to an extent where “even his detractors are now naming him a major poet.” Writing in the 1970s, David Timms calls him the “best poet England now has.” In the 1980s, commenting on the sales of Larkin’s volumes, Roger Day terms him an “immensely popular poet” by “contemporary standards.” In this essay, an attempt will be made to trace what provided springboards to the making of the poet Larkin. KEYWORDS: British Poetry, Post-Fifties, Philip Larkin, the making of. INTRODUCTION No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists … we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. (Eliot, Essays14-5) As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief in ‘tradition’ or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people. -
An Arundel Tomb SUMMARY Instinctual to People: That Love Continues Even After We Die
Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com An Arundel Tomb SUMMARY instinctual to people: that love continues even after we die. The effigies of the earl and countess lie next to each other, their THEMES stone faces faded with time. Their medieval clothes have been rendered in stone as well: the man wears armor, while the woman is depicted as dressed in stiff cloth. The two small stone TIME AND IMPERMANENCE dogs at the couple's feet make the scene feel a little less Philip Larkin’s “An Arundel Tomb” is a complex poem serious. that—as the title suggests—uses observations of a The tomb is plain-looking, which makes sense given that it was tomb as its starting point. This tomb belongs to an earl and sculpted before the 1600s before the Baroque period of art countess from the 14th century. The poem takes a close and and architecture. There really isn't much to note about the unflinching look at the tension between what the tomb was tomb until you see that the earl is holding his empty left-hand intended to represent at the time of construction—the earl and glove in his right hand. And then you see, in a striking yet lovely countess’s importance and status—and the reality of how it has moment of surprise, that the earl's free hand is holding that of been perceived throughout the hundreds of years that followed. his wife. On the one hand, the tomb is an image of permanence: cast in The earl and countess would never have imagined lying like that stone, something of the earl and countess has, in a very literal for such a long time. -
The Whitsun Weddings
Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com The Whitsun Weddings something of fearful religious importance. Pretty soon we left SUMMARY the guests behind—though we had internalized all their perspectives—and raced towards London, the train blowing fits It was Whitsun Saturday and I left late. It was a sunny day and of steam. The environment grew more urbanized, fields giving my train departed around 1:20, almost completely empty. The way to plots of land being developed, and I noticed poplar trees windows were open due to the stifling heat, even the seat casting shadows over the roads. cushions were hot, and everything felt very slow. Out of the window I saw the backs of houses, the glare of windshields, and In that fifty minutes or so, which was just long enough to get I could smell the fish-dock. We rode beside the wide, flat, slow comfortable and reflect on the wedding, all of these new river, zooming through the Lincolnshire countryside. marriages got started. The newly-weds gazed out of the window, crammed into the carriage. A cinema, a cooling tower, The train kept its steady course all through the hot afternoon, and a cricket game were all visible from the window. I don't as we traveled south and inland. We passed big farms with think any of the different couples thought about the people cows whose shadows were small under the high sun, and canals they would never meet now that they were married, or how full of industrial waste. I saw a greenhouse, and hedges rising they all were sharing this first hour of their respective and falling. -
Philip Larkin Notes
Philip Larkin Philip The poetry of Philip Larkin is thoroughly modern. It combines a homely, sophisticated language with detailed and accurate descriptions that are narrated for the most part by an entirely personal voice. His poetry manages to capture the moment in an uncompromisingly realistic fashion that can sometimes appear pessimistic. Larkin’s verse can be sneering and contemptuous of society at “ large, yet, at the same time, he can be hilariously funny and self-deprecating. For all its bleak realism, Larkin’s poetry is open and warm. He bemoans the certainty of death, yet affirms the possibility of continuity and renewal glimpsed in nature. You should approach Larkin’s poetry with an open mind. If read without prejudice, it will force you to reassess many of your most deeply held beliefs. © Cian Hogan 2011 - 2 - The Whitsun Weddings That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out, All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense 5 Of being in a hurry gone. We ran Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence The river’s level drifting breadth began, Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet. 10 All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept For miles inland, A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept. Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and Canals with floatings of industrial froth; 15 A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped And rose: and now and then a smell of grass Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth Until the next town, new and nondescript, Approached with acres of dismantled cars. -
The-Poetry-Of-Philip-Larkin.Pdf
Massachusetts Review, Inc. The Poetry of Philip Larkin Author(s): Martin Scofield Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1976), pp. 370-389 Published by: Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088642 Accessed: 15-01-2016 15:26 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Massachusetts Review, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Massachusetts Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 208.95.48.254 on Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:26:48 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Martin Scofield The Poetry of Philip Larkin hilip T) larkin has come to be considered by many people as the best * British poet writing today. He is certainly one of the most widely and one has the not read, read, strong impression, just by professional literary people and students of English literature, but by that elusive but are necessary figure who we often gloomily told no longer exists, the general reader. He has published four books of poetry, The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974), as well as two novels and a book of jazz criticism. -
Prescribed Poetry – an Introduction
Prescribed Poetry – An Introduction Marks: There are 50 marks for this section. Time: You should allow about 45 minutes for this section. You are required to study six poems by each of the poets on your course. You are not expected to refer to all six in the same level of detail in your answer. Use your discretion. You may be desperate to show how hard you have studied and how much you know, but you risk losing marks by including material which is not relevant to the question. Everything you have learned about structuring essays should be brought into play here. This is not an exercise in proving to the examiner that you have studied your poems and learned your quotes – it is an opportunity for you to show that you can frame an argument based on the title given. Your answer should take up at least three pages of your answer booklet. Plan your answer carefully. Check your plan before you write. Does each point answer the question? Have you stayed focused? Make your point, develop it and support it with suitable quotation. Aoife O’Driscoll 2011 Page 1 For many years, the questions were asked in quite a predictable way. Students were simply asked to write a personal response to the poet: ''The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop appeals to the modern reader for many reasons.'' Write an essay in which you outline why the poems by Elizabeth Bishop have this appeal. - 2002 However, in recent years, the questions have become more focused: ''Elizabeth Bishop poses interesting questions delivered by means of a unique style.'' Do you agree with this assessment of her poetry? Your answer should focus on both themes and stylistic features. -
Critics of Philip Larkin's Poetry Seem to Be Divided Between Those Who Detect in It a Profound Nostalgic Sentiment, Bordering
Jacopo Masi Centre for Classical Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon “Not only at exclusion”: The Picture of Nostalgia in Philip Larkin’s Poetry* Critics of Philip Larkin’s poetry seem to be divided between those who detect in it a profound nostalgic sentiment, bordering on – when not overflowing into – reactionary conservatism, and those who, on the contrary, lay emphasis on the intellectual aloofness and ironic detachment of the poet’s stance as typical features of the Movement, which Larkin was associated with when his first major collection of poetry, The Less Deceived (1955), was published1. Against any overly simplified explanations of a chronological evolution in the sensibility of the author, Andrew Motion pointed out that “the book that conforms most exactly to the attitudes and styles associated with the Movement” (1982, 77) would rather be Larkin’s second collection The Whitsun Weddings (1964). * This article was written with the support of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal). 1 Larkin’s The North Ship (London: The Fortune Press, 1945) can hardly be considered the poet’s first main collection, as Anthony Thwaite has made it clear both in his arrangement of Larkin’s Collected Poems ([1988] 1990; referenced as CP, followed by the page and lines number) – where The North Ship poems appear in the “early poems” section – and in his introduction to the volume (CP XV): “[...] Larkin’s reputation as a poet did not, in fact, begin with The North Ship, which on its first appearance was hardly noticed”. -
An Arundel Tomb Side by Side, Their Faces Blurred, the Earl and Countess Lie in Stone, Their Proper Habits Vaguely Shown As Join
An Arundel Tomb Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie in stone, Their proper habits vaguely shown As jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd - The little dogs under their feet. Such plainness of the pre-baroque Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still Clasped empty in the other; and One sees, with a sharp tender shock, His hand withdrawn, holding her hand. They would not think to lie so long. Such faithfulness in effigy Was just a detail friends would see: A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace Thrown off in helping to prolong The Latin names around the base. They would no guess how early in Their supine stationary voyage The air would change to soundless damage, Turn the old tenantry away; How soon succeeding eyes begin To look, not read. Rigidly they Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light Each summer thronged the grass. A bright Litter of birdcalls strewed the same Bone-littered ground. And up the paths The endless altered people came, Washing at their identity. Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigures them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. Church Going Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. -
1 Orals List---Lyric Poetry 1. “Caedmon's Hymn”* 2. “The
Orals List---Lyric Poetry 1. “Caedmon’s Hymn”* 2. “The Seafarer”* 3. From Harley MS 2253 (English selections)* “Erthe took of erthe” “Bytwene Mersh and Averil/ Alisoun” “Lenten is comen wyth love to toun” “I wot not burde in boure bright” “This World’s Joy / Wynter wakeneth al my care” “The Way of Christ’s Love / Lutel wot hit any mon” 4. Anonymous “Nou goth sonne under wode”* “Lullay Lullay litel child”* “Pearl” (1-5) “I sing of a mayden”* “The Corpus Christi Carol”* “Mayden in the mor lay”* 5. Early Modern Ballads “Sir Patrick Spens”* “The Three Ravens”* “The Unquiet Grave” 6. From Tottel’s Miscellany (1557): * Sir Thomas Wyatt “The long love that in my thought doth harbor” “Whoso List to Hunt” “My Galley” “They Flee from Me” “My Lute Awake!” Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey “Love, that liveth and reigneth in my thought” “Alas! So all things now do hold their peace” “Wyatt Resteth Here” “Norfold Sprung Thee, Lambeth Holds Thee Dead” 1 7. Edmund Spenser From The Shepheardes Calender (1579): “October”*, “November” “Astrophel,” “The Doleful Lay of Clorinda” From Amoretti (1595): 1, 15, 34, 67, 68, 75 “Epithalamion”* 8. Sir Philip Sidney From Astrophil and Stella (1591): Sonnets 1*, 2, 31*, 47, 69, 71*, 89 9. William Shakespeare Sonnets: 12, 18, 20*, 29*, 43, 55*, 66, 71, 73*, 76, 94*, 116, 129, 130, 138, 146* “A Funeral Elegy” 10. Psalms from the King James Bible: Psalm 23, 58, 100 11. Aemelia Lanyer From “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum”: “Eve’s Apology”, “Christ’s Passion” 12. John Donne Songs and Sonnets (1633)* From “The First Anniversary”: “A Funerall Elegy” “Goodfriday, 1613.