“AND WHAT DOES ANYTHING AT ALL MATTER?”: Asceticism and the Hermeneutics of Comfort in Hopkins’s Terrible Sonnets

On one account, the life and work of Gerard Manley Hopkins reveal Catholic asceticism as a grim, life-denying regimen, a form of ethical extremism inimical to the poet’s psychological comfort and his creativity. In Hopkins’s latter years, runs the logic, stringent self-denial conduced to depression...

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Κύριος συγγραφέας: Yost, Julia Dorothy (Συγγραφέας)
Τύπος μέσου: Ηλεκτρονική πηγή Άρθρο
Γλώσσα:Αγγλικά
Έλεγχος διαθεσιμότητας: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Έκδοση: 2014
Στο/Στη: Religion and the arts
Έτος: 2014, Τόμος: 18, Τεύχος: 3, Σελίδες: 325-348
Άλλες λέξεις-κλειδιά:B Gerard Manley Hopkins Terrible Sonnets asceticism Tractarianism
Διαθέσιμο Online: Volltext (Publisher)
Περιγραφή
Σύνοψη:On one account, the life and work of Gerard Manley Hopkins reveal Catholic asceticism as a grim, life-denying regimen, a form of ethical extremism inimical to the poet’s psychological comfort and his creativity. In Hopkins’s latter years, runs the logic, stringent self-denial conduced to depression and to poetic chastening, with the so-called Terrible Sonnets exemplifying both. This essay, however, contends that Hopkins’s asceticism implemented a hermeneutic productive of both psychological recuperation and literary ingenuity. What Hopkins sought was “comfort” in an archaic sense of that word, as goal-oriented and ethical. Such comfort, as the set of objects and affects associated with asceticism, is thematized throughout the Terrible Sonnets. Tracing the theme will serve to draw out the recuperative hermeneutic of Hopkins’s asceticism, which redeems Hopkins’s life in Dublin and establishes the consistency of these late sonnets with his seemingly more characteristic earlier work.
Φυσική περιγραφή:Online-Ressource
ISSN:1568-5292
Περιλαμβάνει:In: Religion and the arts
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685292-01803002