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Reregistration
Task C - our comments
The poem is clearly going to be an ironic take on polite middle-aged,
middle-class social relations. The graphological distinction between italic
and roman letters appears to mark a medium distinction between the representation
of someone's thought and the representation of writing (and possibly speech).
In the last line we clearly have the salutation form associated with
the polite letter (medium), and the polite form of the incomplete first
sentence of the letter ('I'm afraid -') suggests a polite (tenor) refusal
to the invitation (domain) with which the poem opens.
The first two and a half lines could be the representation of part of
a letter, or, just as easily, part of a conversation. It is impossible
to be sure which. In terms of tenor, the invitation was presumably originally
marked with polite linguistic form (cf. 'perhaps/You'd care to join us'),
but 'a crowd of craps', instead of the more socially likely 'a crowd of
chaps', suggests an antipathetic, ironic attitude on the part of the person
reading or hearing the invitation. And this is confirmed by 'To come and
waste their time and ours', which clearly couldn't be part of the original
polite invitation either. The middle part of the poem appears to be the
respondent's initial internal (medium) and rude reaction (tenor) to the
invitation, followed by a set of more reflective, and poetic (cf. the
innovative metaphors) observations. As this more reflective mood immediately
precedes the writing of the reply (and is coordinated to it by 'and'),
it looks as if this more reflective mood after the initial reaction prompts
the polite, if rather hollow, formulaic reply.
In this example, then, we can see Larkin manipulating all three aspects
of register-borrowing in one short stanza of a poem, and realising quite
complex effects through this manipulation.
Reading
If you want to follow up on this poem and the way in which it uses variations
in register, read:
Trengove, G. (1989) '"Vers de Societé": Towards some
society', in M. Short (ed.) Reading, Analysing and Teaching Literature,
London: Longman, 146-60.
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