The Movement (literature)

The Movement was a term coined in 1954 by J.D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, to describe a group of writers including Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest. The Movement was essentially English in character, as poets from other parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were not actively involved.

Description

Although considered a literary group, members of The Movement saw themselves more as an actual movement, with each writer sharing a common purpose.

The Movement poets were considered anti-romantic, but Larkin and Hughes featured romantic elements. To these poets, good poetry meant simple, sensuous content and traditional, conventional and dignified form.

The Movement's importance is its worldview that took into account Britain’s reduced dominance in world politics. The group's objective was to prove the importance of English poetry over the new modernist poetry. The members of The Movement were not anti-modernists; they were opposed to modernism, which was reflected in the Englishness of their poetry.