The Conflicting Personality Under The Mask

With the rapid development of modern biography writing,scholars home and abroad have made effective and efficient researches on biography—the particular writing style,as to explore the artistic and historic aspect of biography,the authentic and fictive sides of biography,the narrative strategy of biography,as well as the artistic treatment and value of biography.Philip Larkin:A writer's Life was written by Andrew Motion,whose authorized study of Philip Larkin won a Whitbread Prize in 1993.However,almost no systematic study has been made on this biography.Philip Larkin,the greatest English poet in the 20^th century succeeding T.S.Eliot,spent quite an amazing life under a mask of a hermit-like and humble public image.And under the mask,his life and experiences are quite controversial.This thesis is to explore how Andrew Motion succeeded in characterizing such a controversial image in his Philip Larkin:A Writer's Life.Plato conceived of the human soul as perpetually drawn by two horses,one white and the other black.One dragging him up towards the highest,the other dragging him down to the lowest in his nature.And a good biographer is one who sees both white and black.Motion sees the black and white sides of Larkin under his mask.The thesis falls into four chapters.Chapter one starts with an introduction of the author and his biographee,pointing out why he is so special,the features of biography as an art,the relevant review and the academic value of my research. Chapter two examines the influences of people around the biographee that fostered his personality,which answers the question of why Philip Larkin possessed a personality full of contradictions.Among the people who have made impact on him, his father formed an intellectual passion,love for literature,and prejudice and intolerance;his mother formed his sensibility;his lovers formed his attitudes to love and marriage.Chapter three centers on elaborating the contradictions in Larkin's characters,or the blacks and whites,which was uncovered by Andrew Motion by antithesis,mainly sensibility,lovingness versus selfishness,a yearning for recognition versus an insistence on solitude,a womanizer versus a misogynist.This part answers the question of what are the contradictions in Larkin's personality.Chapter four will be contributed to the analysis of Motion's artistic treatment or the writing skills which is effectively accomplished,or how did Motion succeed in characterizing his biographee.He adopted a number of methods,some of which are particular in biography,such as giving explanation and angle of view,other are seen in literary work,such as description of metal activities and details,yet give the readers a brand-new view on the writing of biography.The conclusion drawn in the thesis is that Andrew Motion's Philip Larkin:A writer's Life is a well-constructed book.His ability to adopt a variety of writing skills gives the biography its characteristic combination of passion and order,builds up an inner picture of Larkin from no doubt endless research and his effective edition,allows him to paint not only what was written but also what was felt.All these make the book one of the extraordinary works of biography.