Alienation in The Poetry of Philip Larkin and British Poetry

Abstract

It is said in the Norton Introduction to Literature that "poetry gives a vocabulary for emotion."  Peter Howarth argues in his book British Poetry in the Age of Modernism that the social progress that has taken place in modern times has left obvious imprints upon the poetic form.  This author is of the opinion that, as a result of advances in scientific knowledge, poetry has advanced, both in terms of its form and its meaning. In his book "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," Thomas Stern Eliot provides evidence in favour of this viewpoint by confirming that political and socio-historical existence may be analyzed via poetry. In doing so, Eliot anticipates Howarth's interpretation of this concept. When Philip Arthur Larkin says that he works as diligently as possible not just to analyze the social climate throughout his poems but also to discover measures to soothe the traumas endured in the second half of the twentieth century, one can really agree with him. This British poet places the social unrest that occurred during the World Wars in the forefront by adopting such a position, and from this point on, his attention is kept on the existential quest that was manifested in the post-war period when many British citizens were intrigued about their material renovation. This is because the poet believes that the conflicts between the sexes were the root cause of the social unrest.