AO3 - Larkin & Duffy Flashcards
Duffy - Pop culture
- 1950s hollywood, Marylin Monroe: Before You Were Mine
- Sexist 1960s pop song lyrics = Cliff Richards’ ‘living doll’ => Stuffed
Larkin - view on women/marriage
- Larkin never married & had several affairs with women
- Larkin viewed women as ‘shits’
Duffy - marriage/divorce
- By 1960s/70s divorce was still seen as a social taboo
Duffy - economic era
- Margaret Thatcher’s leadership = closure of mines decimated mining communities, debilitated industrial cities & massive impact on the working class, especially Merseyside which was in managed decline.
Poems: Never Go Back
Larkin - economic era/why he opposed consumerism
- end of rationing in 1954 & post war economy
- 1960s accelerating consumer culture & advertisements
Larkin - Social attitudes towards women
- The Good Wife guide as a societal education of the woman to become a good wife
- Vulgar, misogynistic comics like Bernard Manning who pushed sexist jokes in mainstream comedy i.e. the overbearing mother-in-law & the 1950s hen-pecked husband caricature ‘Andy Capp’
Larkin - Post war Britain’s increasing prosperity?
- 1948 NHS begins to offer healthcare for all. = increasing societal concern with providing for all within society.
- Financial aid from USA helps UK to rebuild.
- 1951 = Festival of Britain celebrates all things modern and looks to a brighter future.
Larkin: Literary backdrop to the postwar era
- Literature still stuck in its obsession with an imperial past.
- Still an obsession with class distinction & segregation.
- 1954 The observer asks if the Novel is dead
- Plays are starting to feature the literary trope of the angry young man = dissatisfaction with everyday life.
Larkin - literary context p2 (The movement group - what did critics think of the group)
Larkin was part of a group of poets known as the ‘Movement poets’.
Very narrow-minded and hyperfocused view as the group was dominated by white, heterosexual males.
- ‘The movement can be seen as an aggressive, sceptical, patriotic backlash against the cosmopolitan elites of the 1930s & 40s. ‘
- ‘Their verse was ironical, down-to-earth, unsentimental & rooted in a nostalgic idea of English identity. European sympathies were regarded as unmistakeable signs of intellectual pretentiousness and moral turpitude.’ = LARKIN AS ALMOST ANITMODERNIST
- ‘The movement rejected the complexity of modernism.’ & also sentimentalism, romanticism etc. - often expressed through a strict and rigid structure
Larkin’s views on the working class
- Appears very anti-working class: The WC ‘could no more stop going on strike now than a laboratory rat with an electrode in its brain can stop jumping on a switch to give itself an orgasm.’ = The WC enjoy being on strike and evading work.
Larkin himself = oxford educated, white & middleclass.
AO3 concerning Duffy’s poetic status
First female poet laureate. Claims that she was not initially chosen by Tony Blair bc he feared that her homosexual status would not be well received.
Prior to Duffy, since the introduction of the post there had been no female poet laureate since 17th century.
Duffy’s working class reputation.
Grew up in Glasgow.
Father was a staunch trade unionist.
Attended university at Liverpool.
Duffy - marriage/sex & feminism
- 1961 the pill becomes available to married women. By 1967 available to ALL.
- During the 1980s, the concept of spinsterhood began to become appealing to some women as it seemed to grant them some sort of autonomy. = result of 2nd wave feminism. = HAVISHAM
Freudian view of spinsterhood = spinsterhood as something at odds with an important obligation of their sex, which could lead to neurosis and psychosis.
Duffy - literary movements (The Mersey Poets)
Somewhat of an honorary Mersey poet due to her attachment to Adrian Henri.
ao3: 1980S Thatcherism viciously redefined Liverpool as a blighted city.
AO5: rebirth of poetry was largely due to the humour and fresh appeal of the Mersey poets’ work. = Duffy arguably influenced by this humorous appeal, Duffy’s style has often been said to be ‘accessible’ in style.
