Symbolic Capital in “Church Going” and “In Santa Maria del Popolo”

Abstract

Writing in the context of an increasingly godless age, Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn poignantly reflect on the experience of going to church in modern times. Focusing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus, and distinction, this article offers a sociological reading of “In Santa Maria del Popolo” by Thom Gunn and “Church Going” by Philip Larkin. Larkin concludes that despite its terminal decline, the churchstill socio-culturally matters and will continue to matter, whereas the speaker in Gunn’s poem offers a cynical take on the very viability and relevance of faith in modern times. Atissue in both poems is the symbolic and cultural cachet of the church in relation to art. The poems address the religiousaffordances and the socio-cultural relevance of art differently. While Gunn’s poem puts on display the decline of religioussensibility in modern times through the decline of the symboliccapital of religious art, Larkin’s poem intimates that the churchcontinues to matter, if only symbolically. © 2022, Albanian Society for the Study of English. All rights reserved.