In 1989, the centenary of his death, Gerard Manley Hopkins continues to provoke fundamental questions among scholars: what major poetic strategy informs his work and how did his reflections on the nature of poetry affect his writing? While form meant a great deal to Hopkins, it was never mere form. Maria Lichtmann demonstrates that the poet, a student of Scripture all his life, adopted Scripture's predominant form--parallelism--as his own major poetic strategy. Hopkins saw that parallelism struck deep into the heart and soul, tapping into unconscious rhythms and bringing about a healing response that he identified as contemplation. Parallelism was to him the perfect statement of the integrity of outward form and inner meaning. Other critics have seen the parallelism in Hopkins's poems only on the auditory level of alliterations and assonances. Lichtmann, however, builds on the views held by Hopkins himself, who spoke of a parallelism of words and of thought engendered by the parallelism of sound. She distinguishes the integrating Parmenidean parallelisms of resemblance from the disintegrating Heraclitean parallelisms of antithesis. The tension between Parmenidean unity and Heraclitean variety is resolved only in the wordless communion of contemplation. This emphasis on contemplation offers a corrective to the overly emphasized Ignatian interpretation of Hopkins's poetry as meditative poetry. The book also makes clear that Hopkins's preference for contemplation sharply differentiates him from his Romantic predecessors as well as from the structuralists who now claim him. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Forms of Devotion: 1. Bibles; 2. Prayer; Part II. Models of Faith: 3. The soldier; 4. The martyr; Part III. Last Things: 5. Death and judgement; 6. Heaven and hell

Gerard Manley Hopkins and Tractarian Poetry for the first time locates Hopkins and his work within the vital aesthetic and religious cultures of his youth. It introduces some of the most powerful cultural influences on his poetry as well as some of the most influential poets, from the well-known fellow convert John Henry Newman to the almost forgotten historian and poet Richard Dixon. From within the context of Hopkins' developing catholic sensibilities it assesses the impact of and his responses to issues of the time which related to his own religious and aesthetic perceptions, and provides a rich and intricate background against which to view both his early, often neglected poetry and the justly famous, idiosyncratic and deeply moving verse of his mature years. By detailing the influences Tractarian poetry had upon Hopkins' early work, and applying these to the productions of his later years, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Tractarian Poetry demonstrates how Hopkins' best known, mature works evolved from his upbringing in the Church of England and remained always indebted to this early culture. It offers readings of his works in light of a new appraisal of the contexts from which Hopkins himself grew, providing a fresh approach to this most challenging and rewarding of poets.

Hopkins was an experimental and idiosyncratic writer whose work remains important for any student of Victorian literature. This guidebook offers extensive introductory comments on the contexts, critical history and interpretations of his work. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume cross-references thoroughly between sections and presents useful suggestions for further reading.

The arresting poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins arises from philosophical engagement with the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other mysteries of Christian revelation. No previous study has explored his poetry in the light of his philosophical theology. Hopkins's thoughts on justice and language challenge today's inhuman literary theories. With explications of more than twenty-nine of Hopkins's intricate poems and difficult prose, this study traces Hopkins's engagement with his age. New, philosophically rigorous definitions of Hopkins's key poetic terms--"inscape" and "instress"--detail exactly how he discovered the possibility of multiple true concepts of things, each grounded in reality but demanding the participation of the moral will. Doubt of the possibility of historical truth drove many Victorians to scientism or vague religious sentimentalism. Hopkins asserted that humans physically can and morally must learn truth. Haunted by a sense that experience is incommunicably singular, and aware that culture and consciousness shape history, he found support in the personalist religious epistemology of John Henry Newman. On it Hopkins formed his poetics, later enriched by John Duns Scotus's communitarian theory of justice in language. Scotus deeply influenced Hopkins's idea of poetry, coloring not only his arguments and images but the metrical and verbal music of his style. Lovers of Hopkins's poetry will find a deeper understanding of his music; philosophers will find an epistemology and aesthetics worthy of respect. Students of literature will find a challenging theory of the relationship between linguistic structures and the world of experience. In today's intellectual environment, which treats the notion of truth as a cynical tool of politics, and deception as inherent in language, Hopkins's luminous vision of sacrificial love and community at the heart of poetry offers a refreshing antidote to the dry suspicions of academic literary theory. Bernadette Waterman Ward is associate professor of English at the University of Dallas. " An] extraordinarily fine, and indeed often deeply inspiring book. . . . Ward provides dextrous and detailed readings of a number of Hopkins poems, and her discussions wonderfully integrate clarification of idea with analysis of how stylistic features (like alliteration and spring rhythm) contribute to the power of the lyrics' communications. She understands, better than many others, Hopkins' true dedication to his poetry-writing, besides recognizing his intellectual openness to such positions as 'theistic evolutionism', and his sternly chaste (but psychologically honest) dealing with admitted personal homoerotic feelings. . . . One of the most valuable Hopkins studies ever to appear."--Jeffrey B. Loomis, The Year's Work in Hopkins Studies, Victorian Poetry "Ward's excellent study, as it reveals the confluence of intellectual and spiritual aspirations, whether viewed in their poetic or their philosophical manifestation, makes for stimulating reading. In this book, philosophers learn about poetry and poets learn about philosophy. . . . This book is a useful tool for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and specialists in literature, philosophy, or theology, as well as anyone interested in the Jesuit intellectual/spiritual tradition as it appears in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins." Mary Beth Ingham, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly " A] valuable contribution to research on Hopkins. Her scholarship is wide and solid. Although the focuses are not new, their fresh assembly is lucid and their application to Hopkins firmly demonstrated. The exposition of Scotus's influence is especially rich and suggestive in understanding the interactive dynamic of 'selving' in Hopkins' writings." David Anthony Downes, Christianity and Literature "Of the many attempts to define t

For the first time in almost half a century, the world of Hopkins is examined as an indivisible whole. The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins is a synthetic study of Hopkins's writings, written within a framework of semiotic phenomenology.

This book explores the poetics of “fancy” in the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a term often paired with imagination in well-known Romantic poetics. It sheds new light on this concept, which is described positively in Hopkins’s poetics and later becomes the essence of his idiosyncratic concept of “inscape”, as shown here. Chapter One discusses the influence of Coleridge and Ruskin on Hopkins’s poetics of fancy, Hopkins’s experiments in the language of inspiration produced by fancy before his conversion to Catholicism, his idea of inscape as revealed by fancy, and the relation between his fancy and the aesthetics of Romantic poets such as Keats and Wordsworth. Chapter Two focuses on the concept of fancy in Hopkins’s predecessors, William Shakespeare and Alfred Lord Tennyson, who, along with Coleridge and Ruskin, had a major influence on the writer, leading him to pen the play “Floris in Italy” and the sonnet series “The Beginning of the End” in order to experiment with the language of inspiration which he argued only fancy could produce. This chapter also discusses Hopkins’s interest in J. E. Millais and the impact of the Pre-Raphaelites in the development of his poetics of fancy, Hopkins’s fancy as metalanguage, the contrast between his fancy and the impressionism of Walter Pater, and the role of fancy in Hopkins’s sonnets. Chapter Three treats Hopkins’s conversion to Catholicism and his views on Catholic art, including his interest in William Butterfield and the Gothic Revival, as well as the abrupt parallelism between Christ and fancy in “The Wreck of the Deutschland”. Hopkins’s poetic diction is a condensed evocation of art and nature with fancy as the source of his inspiration. His metaphors are not ordinary figures expressing the attributes of things, but are autonomous and have their nature within themselves. Hopkins’s poetic idiosyncrasy is generated by the parallelism between distinctive and autonomous images which repeat the surprise and ecstasy of the poet contemplating art and nature. He endeavoured to achieve the poetry of inspiration with his emphasis on fancy as the basis of his poetic diction so as to reinstate it as the source of a “new Realism”. Hopkins’s fancy foregrounds the discontinuous nature of a new poetic diction, which demonstrates unfettered combinations between autonomous images and signs in metalanguage in advance of semiotic literary theories.

Through the lens of Hopkins's 'masterwork', The Philosophical Mysticism of Gerard Manley Hopkins readdresses Hopkins's frequently overlooked mysticism as an interior narrative within his corpus. Drawing on a range of religious, literary and visual traditions from Augustine's Confessions to the seventeenth-century spiritual emblem, this book demonstrates the ways in which the Wreck deliberately constructs and conceals a mystical and contemplative narrative. Typology and allegory are some of the important hermeneutic tools used in this re-reading of Hopkins, relating the poet to the discursive tradition surrounding the Old Testament Song of Songs, the philosophical theology of the Greek Fathers, and, perhaps most intriguingly, the meditative and visual tradition of the baroque heart-emblem. On the centenary of the publication of Hopkins’s poems, this book places the writer firmly within a mystical tradition, necessitating a fundamental reconsideration of the legacy of this major Victorian poet.

Walking with Gerard Manley Hopkins explores the life and poetry of one of the world’s greatest poets, a man whose verse praises the grandeur of God found not only in people but also in the beauty of nature.

This book analyses the themes of anxiety and transience in the poetical thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a prominent 19th-century poet. The book argues that, despite Hopkins’s strong religious beliefs, his artistic vision and quest for an original aesthetic were the foremost concerns in his poetry. The author examines Hopkins’s early interest in transience, which he later developed through the influence of the philosopher Duns Scotus and the aesthetic critic Walter Pater. In the second half of the book, the author employs Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to deepen our understanding of Hopkins’s poetics of anxiety and transience. He illuminates how these themes shaped Hopkins’s poetic voice, revealing his affinity with Romanticism and his belief that transience and anxiety enhance rather than hinder the creative process. The book provides a fresh perspective on Hopkins’s work, challenging the prevailing views that downplay the importance of these themes. While the book is primarily a contribution to literary scholarship, it may also appeal to readers interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy and art.