ABSTRACT

Poetry Against the World: Philip Larkin and Charles Tomlinson in Contemporary Britain brings together two major poets, who espouse opposite aesthetic ambitions, yet are both taken as paragons of Englishness, in order to ask how they pitch their poetry against an inhospitable world. This book explores how these two representative poets seek to redress an "age of demolition" through their poetry, and how their audiences react to the types of redress they propose.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

“The mind is a hunter of forms”

chapter 1|25 pages

An Age of Demolition

chapter 2|29 pages

The Trembling Mirror

chapter 3|31 pages

All the Kingdoms of Possibilities

chapter 4|37 pages

When Readings Grow Erratic

chapter 5|32 pages

Celestial Recurrences, Lost Displays

chapter |7 pages

Conclusion