Quenched Light, or Seeing Through a Glass Darkly - A Collocation-Based View of Larkin’s Atheism and Depression

Abstract

This paper uses computational collocation-based analysis to examine Philip Larkin's reputation as a depressive atheist.After a brief discussion of the term 'collocation', a complete corpus of Larkin's poetry will be analysed for key symbols.This will be compared with a passage from 1 Corinthians 13 describing the transition from an incomplete human state to that of maturity, self-knowledge and perfection.Both will be checked against a reference corpus in the form of a newspaper corpus of 44.5 million words.The nature of transitions in Larkin's poems (whether from day to night, from dissatisfaction to inability or from love to disappointment) will shed light on several questions surrounding his verse, finally showing his persona as a rebellious, doubting and immature Christian.

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