Philip Larkin: Art and Self | M. W. Rowe

This book selects five topics from Larkin's life and work and examines them in detail. Three studies give close and original readings of major poems ('Here', 'Livings', and 'Aubade'); while two others explore neglected but important themes (Larkin and Flaubert, Larkin and the supernatural). Underlying this variety, however, is a deep unity: all the essays focus on Larkin the intellectual and aesthete, and all explore the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and personal identity. Combining rigour, scholarship and outstanding clarity of style, this book invigorates our sense of Larkin's sensitivity, intellectual power, consummate skill and universal significance.