AS 1 Poetry: Elizabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin
Welcome to your complete study guide for the paired poetry of Elizabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin for CCEA AS Level English Literature (Unit AS 1: Section A). Don't worry if comparing poetry seems intimidating at first! Once you understand how these two poets approach the same big human questions—love, time, ageing, and faith—from their own unique viewpoints, you will find writing comparative essays straightforward and rewarding.
In this guide, we will break down the historical context, key themes, poetic craft, and exam strategies you need to master this section.
---1. Assessment & Exam Overview: How You Are Marked
Unit AS 1: The Study of Poetry 1900–Present and Drama 1900–Present is a 2-hour external written examination. Section A is an open book exam where you answer one question pairing Elizabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin.
The Four Assessment Objectives (AOs)
To score top marks, your essay must balance four key skills:
AO1 (Informed Personal Response & Expression): Clear arguments, well-structured paragraphs, and accurate literary terminology.
AO2 (Poetic Craft & Analysis): Detailed analysis of how language, form, metre, rhyme, imagery, and structure shape meaning.
AO3 (Context): Understanding the literary, biographical, and historical backdrop without simply reciting facts.
AO4 (Connections & Comparisons): Linking the two poets through similarities and contrasts. This is the central driver for Section A!
Quick Memory Aid for AO Balance: Remember C-C-A-R — Connect (AO4), Contextualise (AO3), Analyse craft (AO2), and Respond clearly (AO1).
---2. The Literary Context: The Movement
Both Philip Larkin and Elizabeth Jennings were key figures in a 1950s British literary group known as The Movement. Their work was famously showcased in Robert Conquest's 1956 anthology, New Lines.
What was The Movement?
After the emotional turbulence of World War II and the intense, often chaotic modernist and neo-romantic poetry of the 1930s and 1940s, Movement poets preferred:
• Formal control: Traditional stanza forms, regular metre (often iambic pentameter), and disciplined rhyme schemes.
• Clarity and restraint: Clear syntax and anti-pretentious, accessible language.
• Intellectual honesty: Scepticism toward grand, sweeping romantic illusions or excessive emotionalism.
• Everyday subjects: Focus on ordinary human experience, daily domestic life, and personal reflection.
How Jennings and Larkin Fit (and Differ):
• Philip Larkin: Often adopts an ironic, detached, and pragmatic persona. He examines the mundane, the disappointment of everyday reality, and the terrifying finality of death from an agnostic perspective.
• Elizabeth Jennings: While sharing the Movement's formal discipline and understated tone, she is distinguished by her deeply personal lyricism, emotional vulnerability, and devout Roman Catholic faith.
Key Takeaway: Both poets use traditional, disciplined poetic forms to control powerful emotions, but Larkin leans toward skeptical irony while Jennings leans toward spiritual and emotional inquiry.
---3. The 24 Prescribed Poems
You study 12 poems from each poet. In the exam, you will usually be given one named poem and asked to choose another from the cluster to compare.
Elizabeth Jennings (12 Poems)
1. Identity
2. Song at the Beginning of Autumn
3. Absence
4. Fountain
5. Letter from Assisi
6. The Annunciation
7. My Grandmother
8. The Young Ones
9. Night Sister
10. A Depression
11. Love Poem
12. One Flesh
Philip Larkin (12 Poems)
1. Church Going
2. Love Songs in Age
3. Faith Healing
4. For Sidney Bechet
5. The Whitsun Weddings
6. Talking in Bed
7. Dockery and Son
8. Aubade
9. High Windows
10. The Old Fools
11. Solar
12. The Explosion
4. Major Comparative Themes
Theme 1: Relationships, Intimacy, and Isolation
Both poets explore the difficulty of maintaining connection with others, but they focus on different aspects of intimacy.
Elizabeth Jennings:
• In One Flesh, Jennings observes her ageing parents lying in separate beds, exploring how passion cools into a quiet, mysterious detachment ("strangely apart, yet strangely close together").
• In Absence, she captures the painful shock of an empty landscape after love ends, showing that emotional loss destabilises personal perception.
• In Love Poem, she examines the subtle, shifting balances of devotion and vulnerability.
Philip Larkin:
• In Talking in Bed, intimacy becomes fraught with silence and unease, where lying together in bed makes it "harder to be at once true and kind".
• In The Whitsun Weddings, Larkin watches newlyweds board his train, maintaining the perspective of an isolated observer looking in at social rituals of love and marriage.
• In Dockery and Son, he weighs the decision of bachelorhood against family life, concluding that life leads inexorably to the same end regardless of choices made.
Comparative Summary: Jennings examines intimacy through gentle, sensitive observation and psychological inwardness, whereas Larkin explores intimacy through observational distance, irony, and fear of entrapment.
---Theme 2: Mortality, Ageing, and the Passage of Time
Time is an unyielding force in the poetry of both writers, yet their tones and responses differ dramatically.
Philip Larkin:
• In The Old Fools, Larkin delivers an unflinching, visceral confrontation with physical and mental decline, portraying old age as an inevitable breakdown.
• In Aubade, the speaker awakens in the early morning gripped by raw, terrifying dread of non-existence: "the sure extinction that we travel to / And shall be lost in always".
• In Love Songs in Age, old sheet music triggers memories of past romantic illusions that time has proven false.
Elizabeth Jennings:
• In My Grandmother, Jennings reflects on age, guilt, and emotional coldness through an antique shop setting, focusing on the human regret left after someone passes away.
• In The Young Ones, she contrasts the energy of youth with the quiet certainty of approaching age.
• In A Depression, time is experienced as a heavy, psychological paralysis that alienates the speaker from everyday life.
Comparative Summary: Larkin confronts death with existential dread and physical realism, while Jennings approaches ageing and mental suffering with quiet introspection, moral nuance, and empathy.
---Theme 3: Faith, Spirituality, and the Transcendent
The contrast in religious outlook between Jennings and Larkin is one of the most productive areas for comparison.
Elizabeth Jennings (Devout Roman Catholic):
• In The Annunciation, Jennings explores Mary's encounter with the divine, focusing on sacred mystery, surrender, and spiritual grace.
• In Letter from Assisi, the Italian setting evokes meditation on humility, holiness, and the enduring presence of faith.
• In Fountain, the energetic ascent and descent of water becomes an emblem of spiritual renewal, order, and transcendent beauty.
Philip Larkin (Agnostic / Sceptical Observer):
• In Church Going, the agnostic speaker stops at an empty church, unsure why he visited, yet acknowledges that the building is "a serious house on serious earth" that satisfies a persistent human hunger for meaning.
• In Faith Healing, Larkin watches an American preacher offering false hope to vulnerable crowds, pitying the universal human need to be loved and healed.
• In The Explosion, Larkin offers a rare, almost visionary glimpse of the afterlife following a mining disaster, showing his complex engagement with consolation.
Comparative Summary: Jennings writes from within a framework of genuine Christian belief and theological contemplation, whereas Larkin stands outside faith as a wistful, sceptical observer of religious practice.
---5. Poetic Form, Structure, and Technique (AO2 Focus)
When writing your essays, never talk only about what a poem is about—always analyze how it is built.
Form and Metre
• Regular Stanzas and Metre: Both poets rely heavily on iambic metres and formal rhyme schemes. The strict structure acts as an emotional corset, holding turbulent feelings under tight control.
• Enjambment and Caesura: Look closely at where lines spill over (enjambment) or pause abruptly (caesura). For example, in Larkin's Talking in Bed, pauses mirror the uncomfortable silences between two partners. In Jennings' One Flesh, caesura emphasizes the emotional distance between the parents.
Tone and Diction
• Larkin's Diction: Blends colloquial, mundane phrasing with sudden, soaring lyrical conclusions (e.g., the transition from casual observations to transcendent imagery in The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows).
• Jennings' Diction: Uses clean, precise, philosophical vocabulary. She avoids slang, favoring calm, meditative, and measured language that invites thoughtful reflection.
Key Takeaway: Master the connection between form and feeling. When a poet chooses a rigid rhyme scheme to write about anxiety or heartbreak, the form itself reinforces the theme of restraint.
---6. Common Mistakes to Avoid in the Exam
• Unequal Weighting: Writing three pages on Larkin and only one page on Jennings. Keep your discussion balanced 50/50 throughout the essay.
• "Context Dumping": Writing long paragraphs about Larkin's career as a librarian or Jennings' hospital stays without directly linking the details to specific lines of poetry.
• Treating Poems as Stories: Forgetting to analyze poetic techniques like rhyme, rhythm, stanza shape, and figurative imagery.
• Ignoring the Named Poem: The exam prompt will name one specific poem. If you fail to write extensively on that named poem, your marks will be capped significantly.
• Block Comparisons: Writing about Poem A entirely, then Poem B entirely, with no links in between. Use comparative transition words (similarly, conversely, in stark contrast, likewise) in every main paragraph!
7. Quick Topic Summary & Revision Checklist
Before entering the exam, make sure you can:
✓ Identify the main features of The Movement and explain how both poets reflect them.
✓ Compare how Jennings and Larkin treat relationships (e.g., One Flesh vs. Talking in Bed).
✓ Compare how they depict mortality and time (e.g., My Grandmother vs. The Old Fools / Aubade).
✓ Contrast Jennings' Catholic faith with Larkin's agnostic scepticism (e.g., The Annunciation vs. Church Going).
✓ Quote specific lines from both poets and analyze their metre, form, rhyme, and tone.