‘What I have done Violent’: Hopkins and Violence
The paper, broadly set at the intersection of poetry with theology and, to a lesser extent, civilisation, attempts to examine Hopkins’s attitude to violence and the ways in which he is attracted to it and exploits it in his poetry. His poetics is informed by violence at several levels, from that of...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2004-10-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/15362 |
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| Summary: | The paper, broadly set at the intersection of poetry with theology and, to a lesser extent, civilisation, attempts to examine Hopkins’s attitude to violence and the ways in which he is attracted to it and exploits it in his poetry. His poetics is informed by violence at several levels, from that of poetic inspiration to the insistence of sprung rhythm, and the way the poem is to be received by the reader. As initial reference-points, the Bible and the Ignatian Exercises are alluded to. The frequent appearance of men-on-women violence in Hopkins’s poetry is examined in the light of recently-published social history of the Victorian period. Hopkins’s mature poetry progresses from the violence of sacrifice to that of war—a theme that becomes increasingly predominant in Hopkins’s work from 1879 till his death ten years later—not excluding the combat between the poetic persona and the Creator and the conflict of the self with itself. The concept of non-violent violence, taking its cue from Hopkins’s expression, and experience of, ‘blissful agony’, is a possible means of interpreting the poems on their own terms. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |