| A modest attempt has been made in the present thesis to study major themes and concerns in the poetry of Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn, who are two widely known and internationally recognized voices of mid-twentieth century British poetry, in the context of what is called ‘The Movement’. The British poetry of the 1950’s came into existence as a reaction against the trends which had dominated it since 1890. The new poetry started with no fanfare. No fresh theories of poetry and no extra poetic aims were announced in new anthologies. The poets decided to be just themselves and to leave the task of human salvation to the priest and politician, and above all, to the economist. Poetry had suffered so much at the hands of the people professing different creeds that the restoration of the rights of poet and poetry was felt to be the dire need of the hour.
The appearance of The New Lines(1956), edited by Robert Conquest, heralded the appearance of the ‘Movement’ which was a group of poets loosely held together by being genteel, academic and polished, reacting against the mystical and obscure nature of the poetry written by Dylan Thomas and his followers. They were in favour of what Robert Conquest called ‘rational structure and comprehensible language’ and against both ‘mythical and logical compulsions’. The poets who appeared in the Conquest anthology were Elizabeth Jennings, Kingsley Amis and Conquest himself. They shared a new attitude to the audience which did not belong to the elite class alone, which conformed to middle-class norms and had no love lost for politics. They were addressed to what has been called the ‘plain reader’, even though most of the poets were university teachers or were doing other jobs in universities. They believed in clarity of presentation and pronouncing some kind of judgement to which the reader might agree or not. They avoided the convoluted language and the use of obscure myths- what Philip Larkin called ‘the myth-kitty’. Most of them did not have any religious bias. The poetry of Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn, Donald Davie and Elizabeth Jennings reveals a large variety of subjects which have been poetized. They have taken all knowledge for their province.
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