1
Q
What are the poems by Philip Larkin?
A
- Water
- Church-Going
- The Whitsun Weddings
- High Windows
- Aubade
2
Q
Water
A
- you question whether it’s taking apart symbols of religion, or building up
- light represents newness, beauty, and transparency
- imagines creating a new faith where water is the central object of worship
3
Q
Church-Going
A
- speaker doesn’t know or accept his desires (identity changing)
- inexplicability of faith (church GOING, empty church)
- church will always be around (“casting into endless water”)
- poem builds up something it seems to want to take down
4
Q
High Windows
A
- about sexual freedom (sex not conveyed as romantic or spiritual)
- wondering if his generation was judged similarly by older generations
- critique of modern sexual habits and existential meditation
5
Q
Aubade
A
- focuses on the terror of absolute nothingness
- aubade (a song for lovers parting at dawn)
- on the fear of death
- critiquing the way people avoid fear
- departing from religion
6
Q
what was “The Movement” 1950
A
a group of 1950s British writers who rejected modernist experimentation in favour of traditional forms, rationalism, and straightforward language
7
Q
Themes of Larkins Work
A
- marked by a precise, often pessimistic, focus on the mundane, drab details of life
- inevitability of death, the failure of relationships, solitude, and the loss of traditional English life
8
Q
Tones of Larkins Work
A
- highly structured verse combined with conversational tone, dark humour
9
Q
The Whitsun Wedding
A
- speaker is an observer
- first two stanzas is a train ride
- we are watching the speaker the speaker is watching the people (pov changing)
- not romantic wedding but realistic
- fear of change in women
- rain is seen as fertility
10
Q
This Be the Verse
A
- generational trauma
- parents unintentionally pass down their own faults and emotional misery to their children
- cycle of passing down misery
ENSH 369
flashcards
Decks in class (6)
# Cards
