In his chapter "Larkin and the Movement" in The Cambridge History of English Poetry, Stephen Regan discusses Larkin's place among the loosely organized group of poets known as the Movement. Regan writes that the Movement was often seen as a reaction against the Romanticism revival of the 1940s, and focused on clarity and rationality. Romanticism was an artistic movement that peaked between 1800 and 1850, defined by its focus on emotions and individualism, praise of nature and the past, and rejection of industrialization and rationalism. It developed in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment, which approached modernity with a scientific, rationalist viewpoint. In England, this time period also saw a massive increase in the urban population relative to the rural population, leading to a sense of loss of nature.
Larkin himself once said that “deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth,” suggesting that his source of inspired differed from the natural inspiration that Romantic poet William Wordsworth drew on. Yet he does spend a significant portion of “The Whitsun Weddings” describing nature and contrasting it with gloomy industrialization, a common Romantic subject. He also alludes to the myth of Cupid, and classical allusions were prominent in Romantic poetry.
G.J. Finch argues that while Larkin is typically thought of as an urban poet, "there is in Larkin an implicit sense of respect for the elemental forces of nature" and uses the first stanza of "The Whitsun Weddings" as an example, citing the "orderliness of nature" in the stanza's final line ("where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet") in contrast to the blur of "fishdocks" and "blinding windscreens." Finch suggests that while Larkin is certainly not a Romantic poet, he is also not anti-Romantic, but instead post-Romantic.
