CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
Overview:
Gerard Manley Hopkins, who converted to Catholicism
(from Anglicanism) in 1866 and entered the Jesuit order in
1868, served his first parish in North Wales for three
years. Hopkins experienced his happiest years here, seeing
in the beauty of the landscape a manifestation of God’s
goodness through Creation. Here, Hopkins composed a
series of ten joyful nature sonnets (1877), which have
become his most studied works. We will read four of these.
Our final, fifth sonnet comes from a slightly later period in
his life, eight years after his time in Wales, when he lived in
Dublin. Here, he experienced considerable emotional
hardship: both in his spiritual life and in his writing. He
lacked inspiration in both. Like the Psalms, which express
great assurance in God’s promises as well as painful
depths of doubt and suffering, Hopkins’s sonnets,
considered in their entirety, articulate intense emotional
highs and lows: both spiritual joy and spiritual pain. As we
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880
read Hopkins’ poems, we will experience his deeply
sacramental view of nature: his conception that
everything—the world’s beautiful and abundant diversity—is a sign of God’s divinity, which
manifests itself concretely in our human lives. Central to his sacramental vision are two concepts
that he developed: inscape (the God-given distinctness of each created thing) and instress (the
divinely-charged power and energy within each element in creation).
To learn more about Gerard Manley Hopkins as a poet and priest, and to hear his poems
read, please listen to the following lecture, broadcast on the CBC program Ideas in 2010. The
lecture is titled “Original Spare Strange” (these words come from his poem “Pied Beauty). The
lecture is 54 minutes long. When you get to the website, click on the icon “Listen to . . . .”
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2010/12/02/original-spare-strange/
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Objectives:
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To examine, biographically, Hopkin’s conversion to Catholicism and his choice to become a
Jesuit priest
To situate his nature sonnets in that biographical context, which he wrote while working in
his first parish in northern Wales
To consider his deeply sacramental view of nature: the significance of nature to his
understanding and experience of God: his conception that everything (the world’s diversity)
is connected to God (re-enacted in the Eucharist)
To define his key terms inscape (the distinctness of each created thing) and instress (the
dynamic power and energy within each element in creation)
To compare his sonnets to the Psalms of David (read earlier), which similarly express
intense, emotional spiritual experiences, both those of ecstasy and doubt
To study the traditional sonnet form and to examine how Hopkins uses that form
expressively (and inventively) to manifest his religious feelings
Readings:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=Hopkins
“God’s Grandeur”
“Pied Beauty”
“The Windhover” (please read this poem through the learning lab)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/173667
“As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
“Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord”
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.2.1. Hopkins’ Uniqueness as a Poet
Hopkins is a Romantic (venerating nature), a Victorian (witnessing the scarring of the
landscape as a result of the Industrial Revolution), and a Modern (experimenting formally with
language). As well, he is a traditionalist (using the conventional sonnet form). Above all, he is a
deeply religious man (a Jesuit priest). Notice how all of these strands are intertwined in these five
sonnets.
The Romantic element
Hopkins clearly focuses his attention in these sonnets on Nature. He sees the natural world
as sacramental: an outward, visible sign of invisible spiritual mysteries. The beauty of
Creation opens one’s heart to goodness, truth, and God. Nature is always renewed because it
contains the energy of Christ; thus, wearied humanity is refreshed by contemplation of, and
immersion in, the natural world. In what specific ways does Hopkins see Nature as
sacramental?
The Victorian element
More than the Romantics (in the first decades of the 19th century), Hopkins, when he was
writing in the 1870s, had witnessed the expansion of the Industrial Revolution in England:
the development of steam technology, the proliferation of railways across the country, the
mechanization of labour in factories, and the atmospheric dirtiness. Still, unlike other
Victorian writers, he chose not to document this momentous, unprecedented historical
change, but to witness the resilience of Nature even under the heavy foot of human
trampling. How is Hopkins able to sustain this focus on natural beauty in a highly
industrialized era?
The Modern Element
Notice how Hopkins experiments with language in ways that his predecessors do not. First,
he delights in the sounds of words. He orders words carefully to create repeated patterns in
their letters (alliteration, assonance, and consonance), and to produce both end rhyme and
internal rhyme. He also uses sequences of heavily-stressed monosyllabic words to create
strong rhythms. Second, he plays with sentence structure: he omits non-essential words
(ellipsis), makes daring line breaks (enjambment), invents new words, creates compound
words, strings together related words, and reorders the normal order of words (syntax). In
effect, he breaks the “rules” for grammar. Notice how, through these techniques, Hopkins
creates density: so much is compressed into the poem in both crashing sound patterns and
multiple images. What is the effect of his experimentation? Does it invigorate his language?
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
Does it convey his religious intensity? Is he suggesting that words themselves have a divine
energy?
The Formal Element
Each of the poems that we are reading is a sonnet: specifically, a Petrarachan sonnet. That
means that each sonnet has an octave and a sestet, a division that conveys the duality of the
content: problem/solution, question/answer, statement/counterstatement. Identify the
turn (at line 9) in each sonnet: what change in the speaker’s thoughts occurs? Also, think
about why Hopkins has chosen the brief sonnet form to express the immensity of God.
The Religious Element
Think about two concepts unique to Hopkins: inscape and instress. Inscape is the idea that
every person or thing has an essence: aspects that make it a unique entity in creation (shape,
colour, form, movement, and so on). Hopkins believed that everything in Creation has this
because all things radiate from God. Instress is the dynamic power, or energy, within every
created thing; it impels them to make their uniqueness known. We can think of instress is an
extension of the Eucharist: the constant self-giving of Christ. It is the primal force that
animates all. Consequently, each thing, while unique, is connected: one God is behind all of
the world’s diversity.
9.2.2. Literary Analysis and Study Questions: Part 1
In the first four sonnets, Hopkins identifies particular aspects of nature that manifest both God’s
transcendent divinity and His immanent presence in the created world. He expresses God’s
presence exuberantly, but somewhat differently, in each poem:
a) as nature’s capacity to eternally renew and refresh itself—as its pulsates with divine energy—
in spite of humanity’s indifferent, heavy trampling and blackening of the earth (“God’s
Grandeur”);
b) as the variously coloured, shaped, textured, imperfect, and irregular aspects of God’s
wonderfully diversified creation (“Pied Beauty”);
c) as a bird’s majestic, effortless, powerful flight, as a dauphin (son of the King) of the dawn (God)
(“The Windhover”);
d) and as human beings, in a state of grace, who manifest God’s law through their acts, speech,
appearance, and thoughts, radiating outwardly the indwelling presence of God in a just person
(“As Kingfishers catch fire”).
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
a) “God’s Grandeur”
1. What metaphors, in the octave, describe “God’s Grandeur”? Think about reflected light
shining off of crumpled tin foil and electricity and oil pressed out of olives: how are they
wonderfully fitting as images of God’s grandeur? What connotations does each have?
2. What is the problem? What have humans failed to do?
3. Think about the words “shod” (wearing shoes) and “trod”. What is the problem with human
feet? Are bare, sensitive feet holier? (Can you think of passages from Scripture that state
that?)
4. What is the effect of the dense cluster of images and sound patterns describing the human
degradation of the earth? What is happening in the 19th century that would prompt
Hopkins’ to write in this way?
5. In the sestet, what solution is offered? What is the “dearest freshness” that resides in “deep
down things”? Nature, it seems, always rebounds, in spring and each morning, regardless of
what humans do to it. Is God the same? What is the significance of the bird: does it hover
over the world, in protection, as God does?
b) “Pied Beauty”
1. Familiarize yourself with the term “pied.” Hopkins seems to be praising the variously
coloured, irregularly shaped, imperfect things. He reveres them for being quirky and
mottled: not symmetrical or perfect. This is the delight of Creation: its diversity.
What unusual and underappreciated entities does Hopkins make us notice and appreciate?
How does he portray each one uniquely and vividly? Does this diversity prompt wonder and
praise?
2. What diversity and compression of sounds in the words suggest that language, too, is “pied”
and therefore full of God’s divine charge? Can language—and a poem—be sacramental, just
as nature is?
3. Notice how this is a shortened sonnet: is he suggesting that the sonnet form, too, can be
“pied”?
c) “The Windhover”
1. Notice how Hopkins observes the flight of the bird very carefully and perceptively. He
follows it closely with his eye. Think about Hopkins’ choice of a bird, specifically a
windhover, as his subject. Read the octave carefully. What is unique about this bird’s
movements? How and why does the speaker’s enthusiasm mount during its magnificent
display in flight?
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
2. However, is the bird more than just that? Is the bird a metaphor for Christ? If so, what are
their shared characteristics?
a. Is the bird, while earthly, also (in its soaring height) somewhat divine, for example?
b. Think about Hopkins’s diction: “buckle,” “fall,” “dauphin,” “minion,” “fire,” “dawn,” and
“wonder,” for example. How do these words convey a Christ-like presence? As humble
human beings, we can’t see Christ literally, but Hopkins enables us to intuit and feel
Christ’s presence—he makes it visible—through the bird: the bird, therefore, is
sacramental.
3. Notice, too, how Hopkins finds instress in everything. Even the earth, when turned over by a
human plough, has a “shine,” or divine energy. All things, even when “buckled,” or collapsed
under pressure (as Christ fell during the Passion), still “shine.” So, too, dying embers in a
fire, while blue and bleak when in stasis, burst into colour when they fall in a fireplace and
“gash” open. With such divine energy everywhere, it is “No wonder,” Hopkins writes, that
every phenomenon in the natural world is readily applicable to spiritual life.
d) “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
1. This poem, like “Pied Beauty,” manifests Hopkins’s notion of instress: again, the idea that all
created things possess a unique essence, or “self,” derived from Christ. In the octave,
Hopkins gives 4 examples of things “selving” in the natural world: two visual and two
auditory. What are they? Then he states that absolutely every object naturally produces an
outward effect from the wellspring that is within: each has a unique self and purpose in
God’s plan.
2. How does the sonnet deepen in the sestet (“I say more”)? Here, he focuses on human beings,
who are “selving,” too, but in a more complex way, for they are made in God’s image,
emanating what is “just.” What are the various ways in which humans manifest outwardly
the depth of the interior self? Do they only “act” justly, or are speech, appearance, and
thinking also manifestations of inner grace? Is that radiating divinity apparent in one place
only, or everywhere? Again, for Hopkins, the world is sacramental: in this poem, he presents
the human being in those terms: each one of us, in a state of grace, makes visible God’s
invisible indwelling in all things.
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
9.2.3. Literary Analysis: Part 2
About eight years after writing his nature sonnets, while living in Dublin, Ireland, Hopkins
wrote a series of poems in a much altered mood, referred to as his Terrible Sonnets, for they
express his agonized heart, loneliness, spiritual dryness, self-loathing, loss of creativity, and feelings
of imprisonment. However, while these sonnets express pain and acknowledge the mystery of
suffering, Hopkins never doubts God’s existence or falls into despair. Indeed, a central tenet of
Christian faith is the acceptance that suffering and affliction have positive value and permit
spiritual growth: think of St. John of the Cross in The Dark Night of the Soul and, most importantly,
Christ’s death on the cross. The Christian journeyentails pain and suffering, the mysteries of which
are never explained; nevertheless, Christian faith affirms that God is always an indwelling presence
in our lives.
For Hopkins, then, unlike the Victorian poets whose works we have just read, the pain
expressed in these sonnets arises not from contemporary social and historical problems (namely,
human industry) but from the vicissitudes of one’s personal faith: the struggle to continue to
believe in God—to overcome fear of being abandoned by God—in the midst of interior darkness, a
longing that is expressed, as well, in the sonnets that we read by John Donne and in the Psalms.
e) “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord”
1. Note the epigraph. Find that text in the Bible. What is Jeremiah asking of God? What human
sins is he distressed by?
2. What is the “problem” (the cry of pain) that the speaker expresses in the octave? If God is
“just,” as the speaker acknowledges, why do injustices triumph? What are the injustices that
he names? What happens to him, in contrast, as he devotes himself to serving God?
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Later, we will see that Thomas Hardy, in “Hap,” asks the same distressing questions,
although he, unlike Hopkins, does not have an unwavering Christian faith, and sees the
world as randomly “hap” hazard, that is, lacking divine providence.
3. Does the speaker express a “solution” in the sestet? He turns his thoughts to spring. What
does he observe around him? Think about the words “thick,” “laced,” “fresh” and “build”:
what do they suggest? The speaker, in contrast to spring, feels that he does “not . . . build”
and can only “strain.” However, simply in the act of observing spring does he find hope, do
you think?
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
4. What is the speaker’s prayer to God in the final line? What metaphor does he use to express
it? Why? Does the act of praying itself suggest hope: does it assert that there is a God who
will listen and respond?
9.2.4. Questions for Blackboard Discussion
1. After working through the questions above, tell the class which sonnet you think is the most
powerful in religious terms. Justify your choice with clear reasons.
2. Think about Hopkins’ poems in visual terms. Which images are most visually effective? Why?
Does the visual element enrich the poems? Initially, Hopkins planned to become a poet-artist.
He deliberately trained himself to look carefully at the world, he learned about contemporary
art and architecture, and he socialized with painters in the pre-Raphaelite circle. With time, he
integrated his visual interests with his religious convictions, believing that the concrete visual
world is interconnected with the eternal one.
3. As you think about the visual images in the poem, look at the drawings below by Hopkins. Do
any of them resemble or reinforce aspects of the poems? If so, how?
(Source for the images: http://www.richard.austin.sh/index.htm)
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Nine – The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)
B u ds o f T h e Wh it e L i ly
Ma n o r F a r m, Sha nk l i n , Jul y 19 , 18 63
Ma n a t o n , D ev o n, S e p t 2 , 18 63
I ris , Ma no r F a rm , Sha n k l in Jul y 8, 1 86 3
Be ec h , G ods hil l Ch u rch b eh i nd ,
fr o m Ap pl ed u rco m b e J ul y 25 , 18 63
Lesson 9.2 – Religious Conviction: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1888)
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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