A comprehensive list of key quotes with brief inferences from the Comedy Poetry Anthology, carefully selected according to the requirements of the AQA A Level English Literature B Comedy exam.
‘Kneeling up on the sand in tautened white satin’ – icon of femininity and of the life
beautiful, the girl symbolises purity with the whiteness of her dress
‘a hotel with palms seemed to expand from her thighs and spread breast-lifting arms’ – the
girl is being sexualised by seemingly giving birth to the hotel, some criticism of advertising
techniques as beauty is associated with increasingly popularity
‘She was slapped up one day in March’ – use of the aggressive, colloquial verb adds a degree
of double meaning between comedy and danger
‘her face was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed; huge tits and a fissured cotch were scored
well in’ – she is over-sexualised by men, Larkin doesn’t spare us the graphic detail perhaps to
satirise the vandalism
‘a tuberous cock and balls’ – shocking subject matter for a poem but it is guiltily amusing,
although this could contain rape imagery
‘Autographed Titch Thomas’ – subtle criticism perhaps that someone is seemingly proud of
defiling the girl’s beauty
‘Someone had used a knife or something to stab right through the moustached lips of her
smile’ – darker tone with the sharp and aggressive language, suggesting a more sinister
motive in defiling the image
‘She was too good for this life’ – easy irony, she was advertising the good life but she was
too good for it – patriarchal society has become over-sexualised to the extent of brutality
‘Now Fight Cancer is there’ – she is forgotten within only a couple of weeks and replaced
with a tinge of tragedy as reference to cancer signifies that the joke is over
A Satirical Elegy. On the Death of a Late Famous General
‘could that Mighty Warrior fall?’ – comic deflation in the irony that the General just dies of
old age in his bed
‘The last loud trump must wake him now’ – complete inversion of the General’s
respectability, overt comic deflation with reference to flatulence
‘as the noise grows stronger, he’d wish to sleep a little longer’ – the noise could be the
approach of Hell, suggesting he won’t go to Heaven. Or could be the stench of the ‘trump’
‘This world he cumber’d long enough’ – he has burdened the world (out-stayed his
welcome), inversion of his heroic reputation
‘He left behind so great a stink’ – inverts his legacy, ends up just stinking as a result of his
unscrupulous actions
‘Behold his funeral appears, nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears’ – complete absence of
sorrow greets his passing
‘True to his profit and his pride, he made them weep before he dy’d’ – cutting criticism, it’s
an inversion as we wouldn’t expect weeping to precede death
‘float upon the tide of state’ – the Duke is simply a yes-man, he changes his views to suit his
social climbing agenda
‘From all his ill-got honours flung, turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung’ – last lines
daringly parody a eulogy. Reference to his flawed accession in the royal court; he’s stooped
to rise the ranks and thus he belongs in the dirt
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