The portrayal of shrunk england in the poetry of philip larkin

After losing the empire England shrank geographically. This spatial shrinkage impacted greatly upon the contemporary English psyche. It has been felt that the loss of empire affected the frame of mind not only of the political personalities of the nation but also its general middle class people who had to bear the brunt of it in their lived experiences. It was a very significant issue no doubt, but in creative and intellectual representations the impact may not always be explicitly affirmed. Mediated through imaginative receptivity, the percolated perceptions were not always provided in political terms. But the mindset regarding the “presence” and “absence” of the imperial power to “perform,” “oversee” and “control” is perceptible in various expressions in the literary works of the time. The social antennae of a poet cannot but catch this wave. Larkin reviewed various features of the contemporary England, and the consequent disappointment and irritation at the loss of energy and vigour were expressed in his poems. Apart from the political reality of the loss of empire he was out to probe into the social, cultural and psychological domains where the
aftershock of the loss was apparent in a more complex, but less discernible, way. In the 1950s and 1960s Larkin inherited and subsequently represented this England. This article seeks to deal with the narrower range of poetry in the wake of the loss of empire in an otherwise rich poetic oeuvre of Philip Larkin, one of the best representatives of the post-War British poetry.