Volume-XII, Issue-V, September 2026 |
Silhouettes of the Abode: A Study of Emotional Determinism in Philip Larkin’s Selected Poems Neelanti Nawsheen, Lecturer, Department of English, Netrokona University, Netrokona, Bangladesh |
Received: 12.09.2026 | Accepted: 18.09.2026 | Published Online: 30.09.2026 | Page No: 110-119 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.12.issue.05W.377 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
This paper is designed to discover the emotional fixation of the 20th century British poet Philip Larkin through some selected poems. To dive further into the inner workings of thought, it attempts a psychoanalytical understanding of the chosen poems. Family being the primary place of human upbringing, it impacts their psychology in many ways. This extreme bond conforms the children to their socially required gender and their future relationships and way of life. For instance, in the poem ‘Mother, Summer, I’, Larkin paints generational anxiety and the trace of it that is still predominant (“though summer-born, and summer-loving, none the less, am easier when the leaves are gone”). To understand Larkin’s psyche, particular poems of his which specialize in the connection between family and emotions are considered for this study. This research has been conducted through qualitative textual analysis, specifically close reading to examine Larkin’s selected poems. The poems are analyzed through Freud’s tripartite theory of human psyche alongside the defense mechanisms. To get further details regarding the poet’s psychological formation, Lacan’s notion of lack is studied. The necessary data and information have been collected mostly from the secondary sources. While the selected poems of Philip Larkin have been regarded as the primary texts, assistance from several books and articles has been taken to conduct a psychosocial analysis of the contents of the poem and achieve the goals of this paper. | ||
Keywords: Bond, emotional determinism, family, psyche, tripartite |