The Movement was the preeminent poetical grouping of post-war
Britain. 'We shall have stamped our taste on the age between us in
the end', boasted its most important poet, Philip Larkin, of his
and Kingsley Amis's influence. That Larkin's boast proved
well-founded even those who deplored Movement taste have agreed.
According to Randall Stevenson, author of volume 12 of the Oxford
English Literary History, English literature 'was never more static
than under the influence of the Movement. If the later twentieth
century proved a difficult period for poetry, it was in large
measure because it took so long to realise this, and move on.'
Moving on, though, was just what the Movement writers - Larkin,
Amis, Thom Gunn, Donald Davie, Robert Conquest, John Wain, D.J.
Enright, Elizabeth Jennings, and John Holloway - thought they were
doing, even when deploring innovation and experiment. Was their
influence, as detractors claim, stultifying, a lament for 'England
gone'? What, moreover, of other charges: that Movement writing is
dry, academic, insular? These accusations are as extreme as the
anti-modernist accusations that sparked them, in particular those
of Amis, Larkin, Conquest, and Davie.
The Movement Reconsidered, a collection of original essays by
distinguished poets, critics, and scholars from Britain and
America, sets out to show not only that relations between Movement
and other post-war British writers were more complex and nuanced
than is usually suggested, but that the role these relations played
in shaping the current literary scene is important and complicated.
Other topics it examines include the origins of the grouping; the
role of mediating figures such as Auden, Empson, and Orwell; the
part the writers themselves played in promoting the grouping; the
interlocking network of academics, journalists, and editors who
aided them; and analogous developments in other fields, notably
philosophy, politics, and language. The book's ultimate aim is to
encourage readers to come to Movement writing with fresh eyes and
to gain a fairer sense of its range and power.
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