That Larkin wanted to be a novelist and wrote a few novels and short stories is a relatively lesser known fact today. His two published novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947) bear testimony of this early ambition. Some of his early fictional works including two novellas written under the pseudonym, Brunette Coleman and two unfinished drafts of novels were later published in 2002 as Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Stories. If we try to see the stories from the perspective of spatial humanities they reveal a lot of interesting details related to the problems of place, identity and displacement. The crisis of spatial identity that the characters come across becomes all the more significant when we try to relate the works with Larkin’s own disturbed spatial identity as it is evident in his letters and biographies. Moreover, the early fictional works describe the lives of people living in the tumultuous context of war-time England. They have portrayed a country ravaged by external and internal conflicts as their setting. Place, from that point of view, is an important component of narrative here. The chapter will try to address these issues from the point of view of spatial humanities and humanistic geography.

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Larkin’s Fiction: Emplacement, Displacement and Transcendence of Belonging

  • Ujjwal Kr. Panda

摘要

That Larkin wanted to be a novelist and wrote a few novels and short stories is a relatively lesser known fact today. His two published novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947) bear testimony of this early ambition. Some of his early fictional works including two novellas written under the pseudonym, Brunette Coleman and two unfinished drafts of novels were later published in 2002 as Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Stories. If we try to see the stories from the perspective of spatial humanities they reveal a lot of interesting details related to the problems of place, identity and displacement. The crisis of spatial identity that the characters come across becomes all the more significant when we try to relate the works with Larkin’s own disturbed spatial identity as it is evident in his letters and biographies. Moreover, the early fictional works describe the lives of people living in the tumultuous context of war-time England. They have portrayed a country ravaged by external and internal conflicts as their setting. Place, from that point of view, is an important component of narrative here. The chapter will try to address these issues from the point of view of spatial humanities and humanistic geography.