This thesis is the first study to offer a reading of Philip Larkin’s poetry and fiction by way of his extended correspondence with Monica Jones. Having surveyed the whole of their correspondence as archived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I argue here that principles of epistolarity itself are visible in Larkin’s work and can offer new insights into some hitherto neglected aspects of it. I give close attention to the textuality of epistolary exchange, from which I propose Iserian indeterminacy as central to the readerly situation, and the expression of contingency as central to the writing. Locating these in a reading of Larkin’s fiction and poetry, I conclude that Larkin's work is much more provisional, open-ended and indefinite than has largely been recognised, and that its rendering of a de-divinized world asserts the power of ordinariness and the interpenetration of word and world. Although no single theoretical scheme governs this thesis, ideas are drawn from, amongst others, Wolfgang Iser, Mikhail Bakhtin, Richard Rorty, Susan Sontag and Toril Moi; more generally, I have referred to the work of ordinary language philosophy and criticism for orientation. Unusually extensive attention is given to Larkin’s early prose work to show its experimentalism in genre and authorial disguise. Following James Underwood, I argue that authorship itself is conceived of ambiguously, particularly in its construction of fantasy. I relate this to Larkin’s constant preoccupation with gender, and particularly with his authorial re-genderings and representations of male anxiety and guilt. At the same time, I note how the novels’ lacunae and inconclusiveness substantiate indeterminacies in the reading process, and how a quotidian reality is represented by the metonymically contextual contiguities of contingency. In turning to the poems, the thesis proposes a progression from Larkin’s early derivative lyricism to a Bakhtinian heteroglossia when the poems incorporate principles of fiction. This is developed to show how Larkin’s poetry situates the reader in the indeterminate and undecidable far more extensively than is generally acknowledged. I argue, too, that his poetry preserves contingent experience by giving form to that contingency, and that rather than offering a transparently empirical representation of the world, his poetry involves an “almost being said” in its provisionality and open-endedness. I conclude that Larkin's work is important because of its Wittgensteinian faith in our ordinary language to correspond with the world.
| Date of Award | 16 Jan 2026 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | David Rudrum (Main Supervisor) |
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