Larkin - critics

Question 1

Cox (1992)

Answer 1

“Birth, death, funerals, love, community and marriage are all degraded at Larkin’s hand”

Question 2

Eagleton (1993)

Answer 2

“Raised boredom, emptiness and futility to an art form”

Question 3

Brownjohn (1976)

Answer 3

“Life, for Larkin and, implicitly, for all of us, is […] certainty that it’s golden prizes are sheer illusion”

Question 4

R. King (1979)

Answer 4

“A lucidity of language which invites understanding even when the ideas are paradoxical or complex”

Question 5

Appleyard (1993)

Answer 5

“A hopeless and inflexible pessimist”

Question 6

Paulin (1992)

Answer 6

“The sewer under the national monument”