ENGL 7740 British Literature and Culture

Larkin, Hughes, New Brit Poetry
1:15–5:15 W
Jonathan Bolton

Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and the New British Poetry

The contrasts between two of the major British poets to emerge since World War II are striking. Philip Larkin was a very private man, a confirmed bachelor, and longtime librarian at Hull University. His poetry sought to recover indigenous British traditions in verse that had been derailed, as he saw it, by the obtuse experiments of high modernism. (Larkin’s own axis of evil was termed “The Three Ps: Pound, Picasso, and Charlie Parker). If Larkin hadn’t died in 1985, he most certainly would have succeeded John Betjeman as poet laureate. Instead, Ted Hughes became poet laureate. Hughes was, in many ways, Larkin’s polar opposite. Athletic and cosmopolitan, he was the antithesis of Larkin’s social awkwardness and provincialism. A trained anthropologist, Hughes embraced cultural diversity and was strongly influenced by, among other things, Native American and Serbian folk tales. If Larkin and Hughes had anything in common, it is that their reputations have been damaged by often justifiable charges of misogyny. (Recent biographical work by Elaine Feinstein and Diane Middlebrook’s account of Hughes’s relationship with Sylvia Plath, however, have led to a reassessment of his blame for her suicide.) The contrasts provided by Hughes and Larkin as models for post-war poets set up a convenient way in which one can examine the current poetic culture of Britain, which is similarly torn between established indigenous traditions and experimental postmodern movements in verse. In addition to Larkin and Hughes, we will read current laureate and Larkin biographer, Andrew Motion; Carol Anne Duffy; Glyn Maxwell; Simon Armitage; E.A. Fanthorpe, and others.

Required Texts: Philip Larkin Collected Poems, Ted Hughes Selected Poems, 1957-1994, and The New British Poetry (Graywolf, ed. Simic).

Requirements: Presentation(s) and Seminar Paper.