Asses Hopkins
as a poet of Nature and religion with suitable illustrations from the poems on
your syllabus.
Or,
What evidence of Hopkins's religiosity do you find in the prescribed poems for you?
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the greatest 19th-century poets of religion, of nature, and of inner anguish. In his view of nature, the world is like a book written by God. In this book God expresses himself completely, and it is by “reading” the world that humans can approach God and learn about Him. Hopkins therefore sees the environmental crisis of the Victorian period as vitally linked to that era’s spiritual crisis, and many of his poems bemoan man’s indifference to the destruction of sacred natural and religious order. The poet harbored an acute interest in the scientific and technological advances of his day; he saw new discoveries (such as the new explanations for phenomena in electricity or astronomy) as further evidence of God’s deliberate hand, rather than as refutations of God’s existence.
Or,
What evidence of Hopkins's religiosity do you find in the prescribed poems for you?
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the greatest 19th-century poets of religion, of nature, and of inner anguish. In his view of nature, the world is like a book written by God. In this book God expresses himself completely, and it is by “reading” the world that humans can approach God and learn about Him. Hopkins therefore sees the environmental crisis of the Victorian period as vitally linked to that era’s spiritual crisis, and many of his poems bemoan man’s indifference to the destruction of sacred natural and religious order. The poet harbored an acute interest in the scientific and technological advances of his day; he saw new discoveries (such as the new explanations for phenomena in electricity or astronomy) as further evidence of God’s deliberate hand, rather than as refutations of God’s existence.
One of Hopkins’s most famous (and most debated) theories
centers on the concept of “inscape.” He coined this word to refer to the
essential individuality of a thing, but with a focus not on its particularity
or uniqueness, but rather on the unifying design that gives a thing its
distinctive characteristics and relates it to its context. Hopkins was
interested in the exquisite interrelation of the individual thing and the
recurring pattern. He saw the world as a kind of network integrated by divine
law and design.
Many poems, including
“Hurrahing in Harvest” and “The Windhover,” begin with the speaker praising an
aspect of nature, which then leads the speaker into a consideration of an
aspect of God or Christ. For instance, in “The Starlight Night,” the speaker
urges readers to notice the marvels of the night sky and compares the sky to a
structure, which houses Christ, his mother, and the saints. The stars’ link to Christianity
makes them more beautiful.
