BRING OUT THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF HOPKINS’S POETRY/ HOPKINS AS A
MODERN POET.
Gerard Manley
Hopkins is admitted and admired, in the literary world, as one of the most
remarkable technical innovators who brought about the technical innovation in
the realm of modern English poetry. This marks a distinct development in the
new poetic style. Therefore, Hopkins, chronologically though a poet of the Victorian,
yet his poetry marks a complete departure from the Victorian tradition. There
is a different tone and style in his poetry; he freed both metre and language
from the bonds of convention and paved the way for the emergence of modern
poetry. The poetic revolution that Hopkins sought to bring about was related
chiefly to his metre, diction and imagery, and the innovations that he
introduced were based on his theory of ‘’ inscape’’.
In Hopkins’s view, ’’inscape’’
was the true aim and end of poetry. By the ‘’inscape’’ of an object he meant the
individual essence of that object, its ‘’this-ness’’; and by the ‘’inscape’’ of
a poet or any other person he meant the individually distinctive
characteristics of the poet or any other person. It was necessary for a poet to
be earnest, sincere, and honest towards things to express the inscaps of an
object and towards himself. False feeling or affection and artificiality of
expression must be avoided. For this reason Hopkins felt that a new metre and
diction were required. The diction was not be archaic or obsolete like that of
the 19th century ‘’ Parnassian ‘’ poetry descending from Milton and
Dryden to Wordsworth and Tennyson.
