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This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G
This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Different From Himself: Reading Philip Larkin After Modernism Sarah Humayun PhD English Literature University of Edinburgh 2013 ABSTRACT: This thesis addresses the work of Philip Larkin in the light of critical positions, stemming from mainly modernist perspectives, which characterize it as the opposite of what counts as innovatory, experimental and progressive in twentieth-century poetry. It aims to critique this assumption without, however, trying to prove that Larkin’s work is modernist or experimental. Rather, understanding ‘form’ in modernism as an entity that resists subjectivity and ostensibly includes otherness within its self-reflexive boundaries, it aims to offer readings of Larkin’s work that do not begin from these parameters but from an understanding of otherness as relational. Additionally, it gives extended consideration to Larkin’s prose with the aim of initiating a reconsideration of Larkin’s contribution to literature in English from a perspective that includes the essays and the novels. -
1. Philip Larkin
Notes References to material held in the Philip Larkin Archive lodged in the Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull (BJL), are given as file numbers preceded by 'DPL'. 1. PHILIP LARKIN 1. Harry Chambers, 'Meeting Philip Larkin', in Larkin at Sixty, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber and Faber, 1982) p. 62. 2. John Haffenden, Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation (London, Faber and Faber, 1981) p. 127. 3. Christopher Ricks, Beckett's Dying Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 4. D. J. Enright, 'Down Cemetery Road: the Poetry of Philip Larkin', in Conspirators and Poets (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966) p. 142. 5. Hugo Roeffaers, 'Schriven tegen de Verbeelding', Streven, vol. 47 (December 1979) pp. 209-22. 6. Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). 7. Philip Larkin, Required Writing (London: Faber and Faber, 1983) p. 48. 8. See Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber and Faber, 1992) pp. 648-9. 9. DPL 2 (in BJL). 10. DPL 5 (in BJL). 11. Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1991) p. 52. 12. Philip Larkin, Introduction to Jill (London: The Fortune Press, 1946; rev. edn. Faber and Faber, 1975) p. 12. 13. Donald Davie, Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) p. 64. 14. Required Writing, p. 297. 15. Blake Morrison, 'In the grip of darkness', The Times Literary Supplement, 14-20 October 1988, p. 1152. 16. Lisa Jardine, 'Saxon violence', Guardian, 8 December 1992. 17. Bryan Appleyard, 'The dreary laureate of our provincialism', Independent, 18 March 1993. 18. Ian Hamilton, 'Self's the man', The Times Literary Supplement, 2 April 1993, p. -
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. -
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. -
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”. -
'Interrogating the Critical Canon'-A Deleuzean Approach to Philip Larkin
Vol. 4(3), pp. 51-55, March 2016 DOI: 10.14662/IJELC2016.023 International Journal of English Copy© right 2016 Literature and Culture Author(s) retain the copyright of this article ISSN: 2360-7831 http://www.academicresearchjournals.org/IJELC/Index.htm Review ‘Interrogating the Critical Canon’-A Deleuzean Approach to Philip Larkin Avijit Chakraborty Asst Professor in English, N.B.S Mahavidyalaya, Jaigaon, Alipurduar, West Bengal, India. Email address: [email protected] Accepted 31 February 2016 The criticism of Philip Larkin’s poetry post the poet’s death in 1985 had predominantly traversed a trajectory in which the poet and his craft was deplorably subsumed in preference for the man and his vicissitudes. So pervasive was this neglect (fundamentally academic and institutionalized) that for a long time the major bulk of his poetry was consigned to oblivion. This essay is an attempt to engage with those mainstream Larkin criticisms at the level of their ideological constructs and also to open up a contemporary approach to reading practice from the Deleuzean perspective of ‘Becoming’. This would provide a viable methodology for further interpretative endeavour. Key words: Larkin, criticism, ideology, interpretation, Deleuzean, Becoming. Cite This Article As: Chakraborty A (2016). „Interrogating the Critical Canon‟-A Deleuzean Approach to Philip Larkin. Inter. J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 4(3): 51-55 INTRODUCTION Apparently a profound and dramatic transformation of a Larkin this dictum seems almost reversed. Germaine poet‟s reputation in only -
1 Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Selected Poems “Toads”
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Selected Poems “Toads” from The Less Deceived Why should I let the toad work 1 Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils 5 With its sickening poison— Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion. Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, 10 Losels, loblolly-men, louts— They don't end as paupers; Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines— 15 They seem to like it. Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets—and yet No one actually starves. 20 Ah, were I courageous enough To shout Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on: For something sufficiently toad-like 25 Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, And cold as snow, 1 And will never allow me to blarne My way to getting 30 The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting. I don't say, one bodies the other One's spiritual truth; But I do say it's hard to lose either, 35 When you have both. 36 “Days” from The Whitsun Weddings What are days for? 1 Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: 5 Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields. -
Alienation and Affirmation in the Poetry of Philip Larkin
SYDNEY STUDIES Alienation and Affirmation in the Poetry of Philip Larkin BARRY SPURR I should hate anybody to read my work because he's been told to and told what to think about it. I really want to hit them, I want readers to feel yes, I've never thought of it that way, but that's how it is.! I In Larkin's first collection ofpoems, The North Ship, published in 1945, he anticipates certain themes and features of style which he was to bring to maturity in The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). These youthful lyrics are unashamedly subjective. Reacting against the poetic school of impersonal objectivity and cerebral difficulty initiated by T. S. Eliot, Larkin strives to evoke the simplicities of human emotion in several song-like verses. He is unembarrassed by the traditional disciplines of rhythm and rhyme, and the commonplaces of romantic description: The horns of the morning Are blowing, are shining, The meadows are bright With the coldest dew; The dawn reassembles. Like the clash of gold cymbals The sky spreads its vans out The sun hangs in view. ('The horns of the morning') If the imagery is occasionally arcane - as in the refrain of the first poem: A drum taps: a wintry drum ('All catches alight') it is hauntingly romantic in its eerie obscurity, rather than opaquely modernist. Larkin's debts to Yeats and Hardyare everywhere apparent in his juvenilia. Phrases, such as the opening line of 'The moon is full tonight', reminding us of the title of Yeats's play, The Full Moon in March, the poem 'The Dancer', with its symbolist epigraph, its romantic image of dancing and its oblique, despairing yet adoring, 52 SYDNEY STUDIES evocation of a Maud-like 'she', and the rustic portentousness of 'Nursery Tale', which could have come from The Tower, may all be attributed to the influence of the Irish poet. -
Philip Larkin's Poetics
dc_243_11 Akadémiai doktori értekezés Philip Larkin’s Poetics: Theory and Practice Rácz István 2011 dc_243_11 Contents 1. Introduction: Larkin and Poetics 3 1.1. A Typology of First-person Poems 4 1.2. Larkin Studies: Biography versus Poetry 9 2. Larkin’s Principles of Writing Poetry 25 2.1. Experience and the Tradition of the “English Line” 26 2.1.1. Experience in the “Statement” 27 2.1.2. The Two Stages of Composition 31 2.2. Beauty, Truth and Deception: the Art of Choosing 39 2.2.1. Keats and Larkin 40 2.2.2. Something and Nothing as Experience 45 2.2.3. Idyll and Facing Death 50 2.3. Audenesque Larkin: Non-literary Literature 55 2.3.1. Two Poets and Two Generations 55 2.3.2. Transmutation and Transference 57 2.3.3. For and against Auden 63 2.4. Character, Mask and Monologue 67 2.4.1. Masks and Poetry 67 2.4.2. Masks and Monologues in Larkin 72 2.5. Hardyesque Larkin: Pain in Agnostic Narratives 80 2.5.1. The Lack of Initiation 81 2.5.2. The Consciousness of Death 85 2.5.3. Religion and Agnosticism 88 2.6. Language, Death and Transcendence 93 2.6.1. Experience Outside and Inside 93 2.6.2. Names, Words and the Reliability of Language 97 2.6.3. Asking Questions about Human Life 101 dc_243_112 3. Writing about Time 108 3.1. Time as Prison and the Chances of Escape 109 3.1.1. Metaphors of Time 109 3.1.2. Time as the Moment in History 114 3.1.3. -
The Existential Concepts of Time, Death, and Choice in the Poetry of Philip Larkin
17 THE EXISTENTIAL CONCEPTS OF TIME, DEATH, AND CHOICE IN THE POETRY OF PHILIP LARKIN THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Elizabeth Emily Paule, B.A. Denton, Texas December, 1982 Paule, Elizabeth Emily, The Existential Concepts of Time, Death, and Choice in the Poetry of Philip Larkin. Master of Arts (English), December 1982, 67 pp., Select Bibliography, 7 titles. This thesis examines time, death, and choice in Philip Larkin's poetry, arguing that his approach to these themes is not deterministic, but existential. The argument is based on the similarity between Larkin's views and those of three ex- istential philosophers. Larkin's view of time, like Heidegger's, is that men live not in long stretches of time, but in pro- cessions of unconnected yet similar moments. A constant underlying sadness, like Kierkegaard's despair, makes each moment reminiscent of death. Like Sartre, Larkin finds meaning in his choices, and struggles to live authentically without expectation. Although Thomas Hardy influenced Larkin, given these similarities, Larkin's poetry cannot rightly be called deterministic. It is an attempt to preserve experience for its own sake. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ................ ............ 1 II. TIME.o............................ ........... .8 III. DEATH...................-.................. 24 IV. CHOICE.......-.....-.-.-.-..................... 35 V. CONCLUSION............-....................... 57 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY...............-.................68 i CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION It could be argued that all poetry is existential, but Philip Larkin's poetry is existential in a special sense. It is derived from his own experience, but throughout his four volumes of highly personal poetry, some similarities to the philosophies of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Sartre are easily discernable. -
THE UNIVERSITY of HULL Philip Larkin's Textual Identities Being a Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in T
THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Philip Larkin’s Textual Identities being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Hull by James Underwood, BA (Hons) (Dunelm), MA (Hull) September 2015 Contents List of Abbreviations 2 Introduction 3 Part I – The Letters 30 1 Introduction: Letters and Letter-Writing 31 2 James Ballard Sutton 48 3 Colin Gunner 63 4 Monica Jones 80 5 Conclusion: Will the Real Philip Larkin Please Stand Up? 102 Part II – The Brunette Coleman Heteronym 106 6 Introduction: What To Do With Brunette Coleman? 107 7 Genre 117 8 Gender 134 9 Camp 160 10 Conclusion: Why Brunette Disappears 169 Part III – The Poems 179 11 Introduction: History, Identity and Interpretation in ‘An Arundel Tomb’ 180 12 Down Cemetery Road: The Public Larkin Persona 198 13 Larkin’s Persona Poems 218 14 Larkin’s Impersonal Poems 267 Conclusion 310 Bibliography 317 1 List of Abbreviations References to the works of Philip Larkin are incorporated in the text using the following abbreviations: AGW A Girl in Winter AWJ All What Jazz CP Collected Poems (1988) EPJ Early Poems and Juvenilia FR Further Requirements J Jill LM Letters to Monica OBTCEV The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse RW Required Writing SL Selected Letters TCP The Complete Poems (including Archie Burnett’s commentary) TWG Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions References to archived correspondences held by the University of Hull in the Larkin Estate Collection at the Hull History Centre are incorporated in the text as individual letters’ dates. The relevant reference numbers from this collection are: U DP/174 Letters from Philip Larkin to James Ballard Sutton U DP/179 Correspondence between Colin Gunner and Philip Larkin U DX/341 Photocopied letters from Philip Larkin to Monica Jones All unabbreviated references are given in full at their first appearance, and in short thereafter.