Larkin, ideology and critical violence : a case of wrongful conviction
Philip Larkin has been described as 'a Parnassian Ron Glum' (Andrew Motion), 'a foul-mouthed bigot' (Peter Ackroyd), 'a provincial grotesque' (Bryan Appleyard) and as 'anti-intellectual, racist, sexist, and rotten with class-consciousness' (Germaine Greer). A recent eBay auction advertised his biography under the key words: 'Homosexual Pornography Poet PHILIP LARKIN Nazi'. Yet this same Philip Larkin is a massive and enabling influence on such exciting new millennial artists as Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, David Mitchell, Carol Ann Duffy, Thomas Ades, the composers of Jerry Springer - the Opera, and Damien Hirst (every painting in whose latest exhibition is titled after one of Larkin's poems). Written in an outspoken, polemical style, this volume combines a devastating critique of the theoretical flimsiness of most Larkin scholarship with a revolutionary interpretation of the poems that grants them a central role in the emergence of a British Postmodernism and accounts for their continuing utility to the brilliant young
eBook, English, 2008
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008