Philip Larkin is regarded as one of the best English poets of the second half of the twentieth century. The critics have acknowledged the value of his work during his lifetime, the appreciation of general public rose mainly posthumously following the publication of his biography. Literary theorists place Larkin in quite a variety of literary currents, but there seems to be a general consensus that he was neither a modernist nor a postmodernist, even though he uses many modernistic techno-poetric approaches. The poem Church Going is considered one of Larkin's best poems, which attracted considerable interest in general public because of the ingenious and witty treatment of the topic of spirituality and Christian confession in the second half of the twentieth century. The poem seems to be simply telling a story about a cyclist that enters a church, a church which is no different from other churches, which can not offer anything extra, with his reflection on the meaning of churches, religion, superstition, and unbelief in the modern and the coming time. In addition to the very effective description of the perception and contemplation of the lyrical subject, the poem can also be interpreted as an extremely ironic, even mocking in respect to the past and present Christianity (and at the same time all other religions, paganism, and atheism). In addition, I advocate in this thesis and concentrate primarily on the third possible way of interpreting the poem Church Going, which I myself see as extremely reflexive and almost mystical.
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