The Fl(?)neur's Ethics: A Study Of Philip Larkin's Poetry

This dissertation explores, from an ethical and cultural perspective, the ethical thoughts and artistic innovation in embodied in the poetry of Philip Larkin, an outstanding English poet in the 20th century. Larkin has inherited the traditions of Flaneur and his poetry reflects the ethical and moral evolution and the development of a modern flaneur.Larkin has always combined his literary creation with his own life, his understanding of life and the entire social reality. As an intellectual of the 20th century, Larkin observed the society keenly with what he had seen and what he had heard. Based on his own experience, Larkin reproduced the evolution of social ethics of the past half-century as well as the impact and reflection brought to him by the modern life. Therefore the ethical orientation of modern society and moral evolution is the deep theme that has penetrated Larkin's poetry creation. As a flaneur, defined by Benjamin, Larkin skillfully represents various aspects of modern urban life in a unique perspective, with careful observation and mental acumen. His poetry portrays the change of people's lifestyle, their living environment, the ideology, social values, cultural and artistic cultural perspective in a process when the traditional ethical consciousness conflicts with the modern values. Larkin's poetry in different period shows his changes of ethical thought, sublimating from personal meditation of life to the concern of human beings and the whole ecosystem. Ethical evolution is reflected not only in the theme and subject matter of Larkin's poetry, but also in artistic vision and artistic expression. The space narration as well as the adoption of ordinary language to describe the ordinary life is a kind of inheritance, improvement and transcendence of a flaneur.This paper is composed of the four chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion.The Introduction gives a briefly introduction to the literary role of Philip Larkin in English and the world Parnassus. A short biography of Larkin is also offered to show the development of his literary career. At last, it makes a brief literature review on the study of Larkin at home and abroad and points out the significance of this research, as well as the ideas and methods of this research.Chapterâ… focuses on the exploration of urban space and urban discourse of Larkin's poetry. This paper firstly illustrates the connection between Larkin and Flaneur, reflected in life style, working attitude, ethical thought and artistic overview. Larkin's poetry adopts space narrative technique, and his poems'subject matters involve in every urban spaces:churches, shops, piers and street advertisings. The urban spatial elements in Larkin's poetry are not only the one-way reduction of urban life, but also reflect the hidden anxiety in the interaction of people and urban space, revealing the changes on people's working attitudes and life styles brought by the new melody of city's development. As a spokesman for the urban middle class, Larkin combines the urban scene and his instant feeling with a plain spoken language to depict the British society in the transitional period. What's more, his poetry expresses the individual's reflection on current events, politics and religion by connecting urban space with human's spirit space. Larkin best exemplifies the modernist dilemmas and subtly extends the ethical program beyond reform of individuals to the whole society and epoch, reflecting the core of a city, the values and the social consciousness of a time. Along with the material and commercial expansion, mass culture developed rapidly under the stimulation of material desire. The middle class intellectuals, represented by Larkin, tried to seek their own unique voice from the cultural fault of the transitional period. They intended to break the boundaries between the elite literature and the mass literature by introducing the vulgar slangs and dirty words to the strict poetic structure and rhyme, which are the features of post-modernism.Chapterâ…¡makes an exploration to urban crowds in Larkin's poems, looking through the interplay between urban space and the city people from literary and cultural perspective. Firstly, Larkin makes the crowd as a narrative media. Whether the poet is outside or inside the crowd, Larkin can apply the personal pronoun to show spatial location and dynamic conversion among the narrator, the crowd and the narrative content, which display the fusion and division between individual and collective, personal values and the social ethical system. Secondly, the poetry portrays characters from different social stratum, who share the same characteristics:common faces, voice and life. Through abstraction and summarization of the urban citizens, Larkin unveils the social ethics represented by them. Thirdly, the urban crowds in Larkin's poetry represent his artistic and aesthetic conceptions. The artists and cultural elites in the poems reflect Larkin's artistic conception. Larkin's cognition of women in different periods and his changing aesthetic standard toward them reflect his transformation in artistic aesthetics and artistic style.Chapterâ…¢places its emphasis on ethical values, ethical relationships and ethical norms embodied in Larkin's poems. Larkin lives in an era when British society is undergoing radical changes. While traditional values and ethical norms are struck by the modern trend, the ideology, ethics and individual behaviors of people are changed. Larkin's early works poured his confusion about love, queer understanding of sexuality and sorrow attitude towards marriage. Larkin's unique expression about sex and love, which unfold the sexual desire hidden in one's subconscious, the longing for love and the escape of responsibility, reveals people's introspection upon sexual ethics and interrogation upon moral underscore during the reconstruction of ethical values. His later poetry satirizes sex, marriage and family to present the alienation and contradiction between individual and family, parents and juniors, individual and society, tradition and contemporary. Larkin's change in ethical thoughts embodies his development from a flaneur indulging in fantasy to confronting reality, and finally discovering the beauty of daily life.Chapterâ…£probes into Larkin's ethical care for urban development and ecological environment. Larkin's description of nature has two features:outdoors and man-made, revealing the fact that urbanization makes people completely break away from land and tradition, thus distance arises between man and nature both physically and psychologically. These poems trigger self-examination upon modern urban civilization through exploration of nature and investigation of human living conditions. Larkin advocates ecological equality, proclaiming that all livings have their own intrinsic value and rights to exist independent from human value. His poems not only show profound reflection on issues such as ecological implication and the role human play in the universe, but also crusade against the technology and instrumental rationality that subjugate and control nature, and criticize the urbanization and industrialization's plunder of nature, destruction of ecology, and abuse of animals. Industrial prosperity, with the pollution along with it, not only has damaged natural environment, but also upset the peace mind of people, making them spiritually material. Therefore, Larkin calls on people to undertake the ecological ethic responsibility. His poetry starts from depicting the relationship between human and nature to exploring method to realize harmony between human, city and nature, so as to achieve an overall harmony between man and himself, man and society, and city and nature.The Conclusion makes a summary of the ideas discussed in the previous part, revealing that the key element of Larkin's development and metamorphosis as a flaneur is his artful adoption of European literary style and ideas. Thus, this study may give enlightenment and inspiration to contemporary Chinese poets who face the dilemma when Chinese tradition is confronting Western Culture.