The 'great' post-war poets and their work: Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes (ePub)

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2005 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 2,0, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Maybe two of the greatest poets in Great Britain of the second half of the 20 th century were Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. Both of them were influenced by the First and Second World War. Their whole youth was influenced whether by the situation of people after the First and Second World War or by its consequences. While Philip Larkins¿ father admired Hitler and by this influenced the view of the world of his son, Hughes father never wanted to talk about his memories of his service in the First World War. And both poets were disappointed in some way by the modern world. Hughes was shocked by the rough environment in which he grew up because he loved nature. He was also marked by the way people thought during the Great Depression. That¿s one reason why Hughes in his later work wrote about nature and the place of men in the universal scheme like in the poem "Wodwo" about which I¿m going to talk. Other main themes of his work were the fight between the hunter and the hunted or the human and the divine 1 . Philip Larkin was definitely one of the greatest poets of his time. He was the leading figure of "The Movement", a group of poets that addressed everyday life in Britain in "plain, straightforward language"; their "rational approach was anti-romantic and sardonic" 2 . Larkin never wrote about great feelings and always avoided great words. He, like Hughes, wrote in plain and easy style. Larkin never really liked modern things because he thought that the modern way, especially modern art That¿s why he was also a feared critic. In his poem "Going,Going", which I¿m going to talk about he also doomes the way men handle nature today and where this will all end. After I have been talking about the two poems "Going,Going" by Philip Larkin and "Wodwo" by Ted Hughes I want to show that the two poems comply with the essay "The Pleasure Principle" by Philip Larkin. In this essay Larkin makes clear what he thinks is a good poem, especially today when literature is changing so dramatically in his eyes. [...]