Book contents
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Editions and Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II Aesthetic and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Religious, Theological, and Philosophical Contexts
- Part IV Nature, Science, and the Environment
- Chapter 17 Ecology
- Chapter 18 Environmental Degradation
- Chapter 19 Energy Physics
- Chapter 20 Industry and Technology
- Part V Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
- Part VI Form, Genre, and Poetics
- Part VII Reception and Influence
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 17 - Ecology
from Part IV - Nature, Science, and the Environment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2025
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Editions and Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Places
- Part II Aesthetic and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Religious, Theological, and Philosophical Contexts
- Part IV Nature, Science, and the Environment
- Chapter 17 Ecology
- Chapter 18 Environmental Degradation
- Chapter 19 Energy Physics
- Chapter 20 Industry and Technology
- Part V Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
- Part VI Form, Genre, and Poetics
- Part VII Reception and Influence
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Hopkins developed an ecological poetics informed by evolutionary theory, energy physics, and Catholic theology, bearing witness to local devastations of an unsustainable Victorian global economy. His sensitivity to such degradation was heightened by exposure to a range of polluted regions and by the effort to convey poetically his embodied perception of environmental features and patterns. His poems present everything from flashing bird wings, to waves, to wheat fields as dynamically interrelated through the flow of energy, and therefore vulnerable to its squandering by human industry. Such waste is both ecologically and spiritually self-destructive for Hopkins, given that Christ is incarnate in every fibre and force of the material world. His later sonnet ‘Ribblesdale’ manifests these concerns by lamenting a river valley poisoned and denuded by globally destructive industry and industrialized agriculture, even as it affirms vulnerable, accountable membership in a wounded terrestrial body that is divinely indwelt.
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- Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context , pp. 149 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025