By Stephen Regan (auth.)
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Extra info for Philip Larkin
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It must be pointed out that structuralist criticism does not usually accept that language functions in the 'expressive' way that Lodge suggests. Lodge's project is to revitalise rather than displace traditional literary criticism by selectively accommodating the techniques of structural linguistics. While a scrupulous preoccupation with linguistic categories might seem to give literary criticism a new claim to intellectual seriousness and rigour, the method seems curiously reticent about the social and cultural significance of 'literature'.
Consequently he fails to inspect these attitudes with sufficient critical detachment and gives little consideration to what might have prompted them. More worrying is his tendency to regard such a dismal and depressing state of affairs as 'unalterable'. Such poems as 'Going, Going' or 'Homage to a Government' suggest, to the contrary, that change of one kind or another is entirely possible and is often dependent on alternative modes of government and social structure. To speak of the essential concerns of Larkin's poetry as 'unalterable' is to reproduce their most 36 CRITICS DEBATE: PHILIP LARKIN pessimistic and fatalistic tendencies without regard for the trenchant ironies and rhetorical provocations which they frequently display.
Crozier argues further that while Alvarez's notion of gentility and Tomlinson's 'suburban mental ratio' are roughly identical, Tomlinson is more radical in his criticism of Larkin and the Movement. Alvarez, he claims, is actually in broad agreement with Conquest about 'the proper mode of discourse of poetry'. Both the New Lines poetry and the 'confessional' work admired by Alvarez rely on lyric forms, often dramatic in presentation, and both employ elaborate figurative devices (such as horses) to effect a link between speaker and object.