Critics Flashcards
Motion on Larkin’s view on death
‘Death, is an utterly comfortless blank.’
Poems:
- Ambulances? - somewhat fits this narrative as views death as a fact of life, and end to a beginning. Yet challenges ao5 as depicts that there is some small comfort in death?
Brownjohn on the movement & Larkin’s appealing yet disturbing view.
‘profoundly disturbing…yet appealing’
Poems:
Bell on Larkin’s lucid language and what it enables him to do
‘lucidity of language…ideas expressed are paradoxical and complex’
Applewood on Larkin’s pessimism (in MR Bleaney)
“he is an advocate of misanthropy and pessimism”
Poems:
- Mr Bleaney
Wilson on Larkin’s view of ageing
‘unflinchingly brutal’
Poems:
- Mr Bleaney
- Faith Healing?
- Home is So Sad
- Dockery & Son?
Wilson on the paradoxical nature of Larkin
‘morose & pessimistic…funny and witty’
Poems:
- Home is so Sad
- Ambulances
- Sunny Prestatyn
- Mr Bleaney
- Faith Healing
Jardine on Larkin’s ‘controversial’ nature
‘casual, habitual racist, and an easy misogynist’
Poems:
- A Study Of Reading Habits
- Faith Healing
- Sunny Prestatyn
- Self’s the Man
Viner on Duffy’s use of language/technique
‘Razor sharp technique’
Poems:
- Stuffed
- Captain…
- Pluto
Cash on Duffy & time
‘reflects on change, time & loss’
Poems: Never go Back, Pluto, Mrs Havisham
The economist review on Duffy & people in society.
‘people on the margins of society.’
Poems:
- Mrs Havisham
- Pluto
- Never go back
Rees-Jones on Duffy’s simplicity of work
‘simplicity of her work…addressing complex philosophical issues.’
Critical views on Larkin’s ‘The Movement’
‘Narrow-minded little Englandism’
AO3/5 Jardine on the cultural frame surrounding Larkin
‘takes racism and sexism for granted as crucially a part of the British national heritage.’
Larkin on his own political identity
‘I’ve always been right wing…I identify the Right with certain virtues (thrift, hard work…desire to preserve) and the Left with certain vices.’
Some critics on Duffy’s feminist status
Duffy ‘goes beyond straightforward feminism’
Poems:
- Havisham
- Litany
- Stuffed
Randolph on what Duffy’s poems share w/ Larkin.
‘Duffy shares Larkin’s tragic view of life […] Failure, loneliness, isolation and emptiness HAUNT HER VERSE’.
POEMS:
- Never go back
- Havisham
- Disgrace
- Captain…
Jones on Larkin’s work & the personal
‘embraces the purely personal’
Poems:
- Self’s the man (?)
- Whitsun weddings
Appleyard on Larkin’s pessimism
‘A hopeless and inflexible pessimist’
Fea on what Larkin’s work demonstrates + what poems of Duffy’s share this?
‘Authentic human experience and emotion’
L poems:
- Whitsun weddings
- Home is so sad
- Ambulances (?)
- Mr Bleaney
D poems:
- Never Go back
- Disgrace
- Havisham
- Room
