New Larkins For Old: Critical Essays

by NA NA, James Booth

Overview

Larkin's work continues to yield fresh and sometimes surprising readings. This volume juxtaposes widely different essays by established commentators and younger critics from England, Northern Ireland, the USA, Canada, Belgium and Hungary. Individual contributors discuss Larkin's unpublished fiction and the journals of his lover, Patsy Strang. Others examine Larkin's novels and poetry in the light of existentialist philosophy, psychoanalysis, postmodern, postcolonial and Bakhtinian theories. Some contributors define Larkin's Englishness in relation to forerunners such as Lawrence, Eliot, Auden and MacNeice, or anchor his work in the malaise of postwar Britain. Other contributors search out mystical, placeless, 'factless' or aesthetic Larkins who transcend such historicist readings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312226695
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/07/2000
Edition description:	2000
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

James Booth is Reader in English at the University of Hull.

Table of Contents

Introduction: New Larkins for Old--James Booth
• Larkin's Money--Barbara Everett
• Larkin, Decadence and the Lyric Poem--Edna Longley
• The Two Philip Larkins--John Carey
• Patricia Avis and Philip Larkin--George Gilpin
• Unreal Girls: Lesbian Fantasy in Early Larkin--M.W. Rowe
• New Worlds for Old: Mythology and Exile in the Novels of Philip Larkin--Liz Hedgecock
• Philip Larkin and Lady Chatterly's Lover : Exploring an Influence--Terry Whalen
• In the Grip of Light : Philip Larkin's Poetry of the 1940s--Stephen Regan
• The Uses of Symbolism: Larkin and Elliot--Raphaël Ingelbien
• Postmodernism and Postcolonialism in the Poetry of Philip Larkin--John Osborne
• 'The lost displays': Larkin and Empire--Steve Clark
• Larkin and the Mundane: Mystic without a Mystery--Ian Almond
• From Here to Bogland: Larkin, Heany and the Poetry of Place--James Booth
• Native Carnival: Philip Larkin's Puppet-theatre of Ritual--V. Penelope Pelizzon
• Larkin from an East European Perspective--Istvan D. Racz

Editorial Reviews

Fifteen essays written by critics from the US, the UK, and Europe address an array of themes in the work of novelist and poet Philip Larkin, including his unpublished fiction and the journals of his lover Patsy Strang; his novels and poetry in light of existentialist, psychoanalytic, postmodern, postcolonial, and Bakhtinian theories; his Englishness in connection with writers such as Lawrence, Eliot, Auden, and MacNeice; and the relationship of his thought to the broader malaise of postwar Britain. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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