Joy or Night. Last Things in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin.

First edition. 8vo. 22 pp. Stapled red card wrappers, printed in black.

W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University College of Swansea on the 18th of January, 1993. An examination of how a poet's fundamental attitude towards death influences their work. Thus it is that the poetry of Yeats and Larkin can be seen respectively as a battleground between life and death: the dialectic of "life as cornucopia" and "life as empty shell".

[Brandes & Durkan A57]