Larkin Flashcards
What is Appleyard’s view of Larkin’s pessimism?
‘He is an advocate of misanthropy and pessimism’
‘Larkin is a hopeless and inflexible pessimist’
what is Christopher Rick’s view of Larkin and the way he writes?
‘is a study in self-pity’
link to context
What does Andrew Swarbrick state that links to Sunny Prestatyn?
‘Larkin’s interest in images drawn from advertising is because they represent society’s collective desires and aspirations’- yet poster is destroyed…. what does this suggest? critique of coiety- states he wanted to promote ‘shock and outrage’ at defacement of the poster of ‘what the girl stood for’
what does Andrew Motion suggest about the way Larkin writes about love?
‘none of Larkin’s poems register the achievement of complete calm success in love’- link to context. Ruth Simmons… therefore Motion agrees with Rick’s view that it is a ‘study in self pity’?
What does Larkin say that encapsulates his pessimistic view?
‘It is unhappiness that provokes a poem. Being happy doesn’t provoke a poem’
What does Leo Cox say about Larkin’s characters and what they may reflect?
‘may reflect his own sense of detachment and disillusionment’- detachment from society as librarian in Hull, 25 years etc…. detached from outside world?
What does Cox say about Larkin’s presentation of birth, marriage, funerals etc?…
‘birth, death, funerals, love, community an marriage are all degraded at Larkin’s hands’
What does Justin Quinn say that links the two poets- Duffy and Larkin?
‘Many of Duffy’s poems echo themes of Larkin’s’
What does Allen-Randolph say about Duffy in contrast to Larkin?
‘She has an optimistic view that Larkin did not, most visable in her many love poems’- in contrast to Larkin’s experience of love?
Larkin key context points…
educated during WW2- impacted upon his life and poetry (MCMXIV, )?
Was associated with ‘The Movement’- to counter the poetics of modernism. Basically he critiqued modernism and liked traditionalism- liked traditional jazz (iambic rhythm link?)
Wrote poems in conventional manner- links to anti-modernist stance
adapts traditional style to write about modern subjects and lives of blank ordinary people
Larkin love context
never married or had children
Ruth Simmons- one true love that he never actually had a relationship with (Wild Oats)
What does Lisa Jardine argue Larkin is? (feminist critic)
“casual, habitual racist, and an easy misogynist”
What can be said contextually about Larkin’s involvement in The Movement and it’s influence on his poetry?
hated urbanisation
period of reconstruction in a post-war England heavily influence Larkin’s work.
The Movement writers took into account Britain’s reduced dominance in world politics as the British Empire was collapsing.
Thus, they wrote with a nostalgic tone about earlier Britain, filled with pastoral images of the decaying way of life as Britain moved farther from the rural and more towards the urban. (Here, The Whitsun Weddings, Sunny Prestatyn- mysogyny?)
