A comparative study of the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Philip Larkin

This study examines in details what Larkin's critics touch upon in passing; the relation between his poetry and the poetry of Thomas Hardy. Larkin started his career by writing in a Yeats-like manner. Vernon Watkin's visit, in 1943, to the Oxford English Club and his reading of Yeats's poetry prompted Larkin to spend the following three years trying to write like Yeats, not because he admired his personality or understood his ideas but because he was attracted to his pervasive music.;But Larkin's attempt to write like Yeats came to an end when he discovered the poetry of Thomas Hardy. He received Hardy's poetry with a sense of relief because he was freed from any external claims that would go into the making of his poetry. Hardy's poetry occasioned him to be the poet of ordinary events and situations in everyday English life and gave him the chance to develop his own peculiar outlook at that life.;Like Hardy, Larkin concerns himself with the sad, failing, and bleaker aspects of life. In the meantime, like him, he is equally interested in presenting in his poetry experiences that appeal to the common reader. For this he relies upon closely detailed style to give an accurate account of the lives of his personae. The vision of both poets appears similar, if not identical as it is the end result of taking a "full look at the worst," to use Hardy's words, and a determination "not to be fooled" and an inclination to be "less deceived," as Larkin phrases it. In reflecting the drama of modern man--his lack of orientation, his sense of frustration, and disappointment, and his constant victimization by uncontrollable forces--their poetry demonstrates an unmistakable honesty.;Divided into four chapters, the dissertation brings to light some common grounds upon which Hardy and Larkin meet. The first three chapters discuss and analyze the fading power of religion, the relentless passage of time, and the stinging sense of loneliness and isolation. Some stylistic aspects are examined in the fourth chapter. In the area of style, as this chapter reveals, both poets demonstrate an obvious interest in building negative sentences and creating negative formations (often in verbs, but mostly prominent in adjectives, working often in participial forms prefixed by the class-preserving particle "un").