Philip Larkin: A Shift Away from Individualism to Socialism

Author
Rouhollah Roozbeh
Faculty of Humanities, Vali-e Asr University, Kerman, Iran
Abstract
Philip Larkin in his two poems ‘Church Going’ and ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ moves away from doubt to certainty as regards the function of the two social institutions of church and marriage. This is a shift away from doubt in the functionality of these two institutions to certainty of their functionality and usefulness for society. These poems are the poems of thought in which he starts off by looking doubtfully at church and marriage so much so that when one reads the poems one thinks that Larkin is a disbeliever but gradually Larkin confirms church and marriage as great institutions. The shift in pronoun from ‘I’ to ‘we’ and ‘my’ to ‘our’ at the end of these two poems endorses his shift from individualism to socialism and makes the poems humanist poems.

Keywords

Subjects

[1] Ali, Hira, et al. 2017). "Depiction of Modern Man in “Church Going” by Philip Larkin: A case study through Modernism." European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences: Proceedings 6.1: 124-34.
[2] Booth, James (2005). Philip Larkin the Poet’s Plight. Palgrave Macmillan.
[3] Easthope, Antony (1999). Englishness and Natural Culture. London and New York.
[4] Eliot, T. S., (1932) ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, Selected Essays: 1917–1932. London: Faber.
[5] Fergusson, Rosalind (1985). Penguin Rhyming Dictionary. London: Penguin.
[6] Gearey, Adam (2007). “The Poetics of Practical Reason: Joseph Raz and Philip Larkin” Law and Literature, 19 (3), 377- 400.
[7] Gervais, David (1993). Literary England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Goldrick-Jones, A., & Rosengarten, H., (Eds.). (2008). The Broadview Anthology of Poetry. Broadview Press.
[9] Haffenden, John (1981). Viewpoints. Poets in Conversation with John Haffenden. London: Faber.
[10] Harrison, Desales (2005). The End of the Mind: The Edge of the Intelligible in Hardy, Stevens, Larkin, Plath, and Glück. Routledge, New York & London.
[11] Kamel, Omar (2012). Existentialism as Humanism in Philip Larkin’s Poetry. M’hamed Bougara University.
[12] Larkin, Philip (1964). The Whitsun Weddings, London: Faber.
[13] Lawrence, D. H., (1951). Studies in Classic American Literature. New York: Doubleday and Company Inc.
[14] Mayne, John Sheila (1962). Novels and the Poetry of Philip Larkin. University of Hull.
[15] Moore, Pat (1998). “A Priest in a Country Parish”. The Furrow, 49(7/8), 418-423.
[16] Osborne, John (2008). Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence. Palgrave Macmillan. New York.
[17] Petch, Simon (1981). The Art of Philip Larkin. Sydney: Sydney UP.
[18] Powell, Neill (1979). Carpenters of Light: A Critical Study of Contemporary British Poetry, Manchester: Carcanet New Press.
[19] Reibetanz, John (1976) "The Whitsun Weddings": Larkin's Reinterpretation of Time and Form in Keats’.Contemporary Literature, 17(4), PP. 529-540.
[20] Rudnytzky Schray, Kateryna A., (2002). "To Seek This Place for What It Was": Church Going in Larkin's Poetry”,Modern Language Association, 67(2), PP. 52-64.
[21] Russell, Richard Rankin (2012). Shades of Larkin: Singularity and Transcendence in Derek Mahon's “A Garage in Co. Cork”. Journal of Modern Literature, 35(4), 91-106.
[22] Scofield, Martin (1976). The Poetry of Philip Larkin. The Massachusetts Review, 17(2), 370-389.
[23] Stevens, Wallace (1959). ‘Adagia’, Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse. London: Faber.
[24] Stojkovic, Tijana (2006). Unnoticed In The Casual Light Of Day. Philip Larkin and the Plain Style. Ed. Routledge New York & London.
[25] Ward, John Powell (1991). The English Line: Poetry of the Unpoetic from Wordsworth to Larkin, London: Macmillan.
[26] Watson, J. R., (1954). Poems of Ben Jonson. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
[27] Whalen, Terry (1986). Philip Larkin and English
The International Journal of Humanities
Volume 24, Issue 4
Autumn 2017
Pages 58-68