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Digby Dolben: Moral Masochism



Ciarán O'Hare,
Northern Ireland.
This Lecture was delivered at Hopkins Literary Festival 2008,

Digby Dolben, a cousin of Hopkins's long-term friend Robert Bridges, made him aware of the suffering of the soul. This attraction to suffering is what brought Hopkins to the Jesuits and is what is reflected in his revolutionary poetry. 

The truth is we do not enjoy masterless freedom; we are continually threatened by psychic factors which, in the guise of natural phenomena, may take possession of us at any moment. The withdrawal of metaphysical projections leaves us almost defenceless in the face of this happening, for we immediately identify with every impulse instead of giving it the name of the "other", which would at least hold it at arm's length and prevent it from storming the citadel of the ego ... It is.incumbent on us to choose the master we wish to serve, so that his service shall be our safeguard against being mastered by the "other"whom we have not chosen. We do not create "God" we choose him." No better serves me now, save best ; no other Save Christ: to Christ I look, on Christ I call. 1

Having chosen his master, Hopkins identified closely, not only with Christ's sufferings but also with his capacity to resist the temptation of the easy way. His justification as both a man and priest lay in his ability to inhibit the poetry and creativity which abided naturally in him, and to carry the cross of obedience and suffering.

The restraint of such a gift was a tremendous sacrifice and one for which Hopkins ultimately paid a heavy price, but there remains in the poetry he did write, vestiges of a personality and ego which was desirous of the suffering he had chosen. The poetry itself is shaped by that sacrifice. As a flooding river adapts itself to overcome obstacles in its way, so too his poetry shapes itself around its psychological captivity to evolve into individual, different and powerful voices. The intricacy and originality of Hopkins's poetry portray the effect and depth of the constrained personality from which it came. A devotion to the divine and a capacity for suffering in order to achieve that nirvana, became a type of moral masochism which seeps through his poetry marking everything from his earliest work to the sonnets of desolation.

For Hopkins the suffering of the soul was a necessary and compulsory element on his journey to his saviour, a suffering that was to be sought out and embraced by those who were mentally cite enough to walk its difficult path. This attraction to suffering is what brought Hopkins to the Jesuits and is what is reflected in his revolutionary poetry. The question, what exactly is moral masochism is a difficult one especially as it is continually refined throughout Hopkins's life. Having had a seemingly happy family upbringing it is difficult to perceive what triggered his allure to trial and suffering. It may perhaps have been his family's involvement in marine insurance which brought him into contact with disaster and tragedy from an early age that perhaps planted the seed of fascination, or a stringent moral Victorian ethic that dominated the patriarchal household, or indeed his education at Highgate School cementing the "No cross, no crown philosophy."

Whatever the reason, Hopkins's early poetry possessed an allure to the pain of others and especially martyrdom which he describes in so much intricate detail that it eclipses the sufferer's actual opposition to injustice. The fact that Hopkins's early poetry is full of theses images suggest that there might be an attraction to this suffering and indirectly to the power that causes it.

Hopkins's years at Balliol saw the development of an often over stringent personality who inflicted personal, psychological and physical hardship on himself as a caution against his moral shortcomings. The frequency and intensity of this self-torture suggest that there was an amount of pleasure both physical and psychological associated with these acts. This total and mostly private self-abnegation underlined an over-indulgence that often resulted in illness and mental exhaustion yet this never prevented his continual return to it.


Conversion to Catholicism and Entry into the Jesuits

After his conversion to Catholicism and entry into the Jesuits Hopkins was able to cloak his masochism in a morality which allowed, and even encouraged penance for a self which it regarded as ultimately sinful. The fact that Hopkins relished that penance to an extent that he abandoned his poetry and symbolically destroyed his early works, underlines a personality whose celebration of God is shown by the destruction and renunciation of his God given creativity, leaving the desire for self immolation in suffering difficult to deny. There is however, even in his earliest poem, 'The Escorial,' dated Easter 1860 echoes of a moral masochism. The fifteen year old Hopkins had already begun to show an attraction for the difficult path and the torture and bloodshed of martyrdom.

Throughout his life Hopkins had a preoccupation for those who had been put to death for their faith. Martyr figures like St. Dorothea, St. Theela, St. Winefred, taken back from the dead by St. Beuno, and the nuns in "The Wreck of the Deutschland". In 'The Escorial' Hopkins writes in part about St. Lawrence, the martyr whose death is remembered by the erection of the building, and there has been criticism of his treatment of the subject. Elizabeth Schneider has seen the poem as "marked by an inclination to dwell upon physical torture, cruelty, and martyrdom", (3) and states "Already .there were signs of emotion deflected into unusual and, to many readers perhaps, somewhat repellent channels." 4

For the staunch saint still prais'd his Master's name While his crack'd flesh lay hissing on the grate; Then fail'd the tongue; the poor collapsing frame, Hung like a wreck that flames not billows beat 5

Although this can be put down to the immature indelicacy of a fifteen-year-old boy there are further signs in some of his Oxford poems that this trait remained. There had been signs before Oxford that this young man had an unhealthy stoicism about physical suffering that was not unlike spiritual pride. There is the famous incident at Highgate where he had abstained from all liquids for three weeks to win a bet on seamen's sufferings and human powers of endurance.

Hopkins's friend, Luxmore, had told how Hopkins's tongue had turned black but he had persevered until the end of the twenty-one days.7 Hopkins was however even at this age showing a sense of separateness from his classmates at Highgate. Although not ostentatiously religious, he would, amidst the horseplay in his house at night, sit calmly reading his New Testament keeping a promise to his mother.7 Already Hopkins's sense of detachment and religious earnestness was noticeable. The Puritan strain in Hopkins, and his uneasy suspicion of the sensuous is obvious in the first lines of the long, unfinished poem 'Il Mystico,' a mystical wish to be consumed into a world in harmony with the heavens.

Hence sensual gross desires, Right offspring of your grimy mother earth! My spirit hath a birth Alien from yours as heaven from Nadir-fires: You rank and reeking things, Scoop you from teeming filth some sickly hovel, And there for ever grovel Mid fever'd fumes and slime and caked clot: But foul and cumber not The shaken plumage of my Spirit's wings9,

Hopkins couples his religious sensibility with an extremely receptive eye for a view, and again it is a search for a kind of spiritual fulfilment from a position of detachment. The literary mix here is an unusual one with Miltonic rhythm combined with a Pre-Raphaelite essence, but it may be strangely indicative of the young poet's own turmoil in trying to maintain a spiritual morality whilst at the same time recognising the frailties of his own sensual temptations. There is also a sense here that he indulges himself in the description of the foul and sordid, a trait he was to continue in later poems. There are signs nevertheless that Hopkins has set himself apart from the world of the flesh and senses and intends to resist the temptation by abstinence and penance. 10

Hopkins's awareness of the passing of all things is reflected in his next two nature poems 'Winter in the Gulf Stream,' written in uncharacteristic terza rima and 'Spring and Death' where he dwells not only on the sweetness of nature but also its temporality. Hopkins is insistent on his focus on the bigger picture and looks upon the attractions and unique beauty of nature as flourishes on the path to the inevitable, a characteristic which shows the earnestness of the young man, seemingly already set on a search for spiritual excellence.

This tempering of aesthetic beauty with the sadness of realism was a trait that would develop and expand into a barely disguised moral masochism during his literary life. The persuasive notion that spiritual excellence was arduous did indeed have religious origins but it was present as an undercurrent throughout Victorian society. It was accepted that duty, rigour and labour were virtues that commanded the vital forces. It had been established as far back as Spenser and also in Shakespeare with Hamlet's immortal 'To be or not to be,' where he was oppressed by the same analysis. Tennyson had more recently identified the life force with strenuousness, toil and physical difficulty in the 1842 Choric Song from 'The Lotus Eaters.'

Therefore the Tennysonian view that the harder course must by virtue of its hardness be the more virtuous was a widely accepted perspective in religious and the broader Victorian society. Indeed "No cross, no crown," was a Victorian commonplace taught to children from their earliest years. This view is to be seen in 'New Readings,' where Christ brings food from "wastes of rock" and his way is appealing, just because it is the hard way he Would not have that legion of winged things Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings. 12

It is perhaps more obvious in 'A Soliloquy of one of the Spies left in the Wilderness,' in which the spy's reluctance to take the harsh life in the desert results in his sickening and death. The spy's fondness for the soft bondage in the gardens of Egypt is often cited as alluding to Hopkins's moving away from the Anglican Church and choosing the hard path of the Roman Catholic calling. It is known that flagellation and other forms of physical hardship were evident at Oxford among some of the more persevering students.

At Balliol it became characteristic of Hopkins to become drawn to unpopular views, envelope himself in them, and so become even more assiduous to their cause. In 1863 he was invited to join The Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity, an extreme Anglo-Catholic organisation at Oxford and although he declined to become a member he did involve himself in a variety of penitential actions proposed by Dr. Pusey, ironically some of which the organisation itself rejected as being too inhumane.

This involved flagellation during Lent, a practise he continued with the Jesuits, refusing to eat meat on a Friday, a habit he continued for the rest of his life and the wearing of a rough flannel cloth around his loins as a token of self-restraint. He also subjected himself to the "discipline of the eyes" ) demanding that he always walk with his eyes averted towards the ground to avoid temptation and as a mark of humility. This must have been particularly difficult for a poet so sensitive to the nature that surrounded him. However the unfinished Spenserian stanza 'She schools the flighty pupils of her eyes' June 1864 may give some insight into the temptations Hopkins was worried about. It tells of a young woman struggling to maintain self-control over a heart that would "run riot" at the thought of her lover. He extends the ideas both of schooling (as in the pun on schooling the pupils of the eyes in line 1) and of leashing the passions as one would hold an untrained dog.

This almost erotic impulse possesses both intensity and restraint and reverberates with oblique sensuousness. If in this poem Hopkins were agonising over his own nature, one would have to question his voracity for, and preoccupation with, personal sacrifice. Certainly the intensity of the restraint does not seem to correspond with the degree of passion being restrained, laying the emphasis of the verse on self-discipline. The disconcerting images of the torture and crucifixion of Christ linked to wheat threshing and grape treading in 'Barnfloor and Winepress' shows again a close affinity to physical pain and suffering so common in Hopkins. Christ is "Scourged on the threshing-floor," the vine is "fenced with thorn," the wine is "racked from the press." Although Hopkins handles the octosyllabic couplets with mastery beyond his years, the vigour and energy is focused into the merging of Christ's suffering into our lives. Through this communion Christ's blood becomes "our blood," and we like branches are grafted on the vine of the cross, "on His wood."

The suggestion here is not that man shares the glory of Christ but rather his suffering, from which we conclude will come spiritual fulfilment. It is known that flagellation and physical hardship were endured by Hopkins himself and by those in the religious circles in which he moved both at Oxford and later in the Jesuit community. Penances, denials and chastenings are much in evidence in his early poetry.

The regularity of these themes in Hopkins's work does raise the question, does the denial of pleasure and the intricate description of both physical and psychological suffering become part of the experience of pleasure itself? In poems like 'Easter Communion', the first of Hopkins's sonnets, we can see how what some deem as religious ardour others can view as moral masochism. Here, every abnegation is transformed into some compensatory richness.

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast: God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips. You striped in secret with breath taking whips, Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced To crosses meant for Jesu's ... 14

The third line here obviously refers to the very same type of description of torture Elizabeth Schneider had been concerned about in "The Escorial," only this time it is self-inflicted. The same feature is repeated in 'Easter' with its

Beauty now for ashes wear, Perfumes for the garb of woe. Chaplets for dishevelled hair, Dances for sad footsteps slow 15

The inference here being that we must somehow deserve "beauty, perfumes, chaplets and dances and can only deserve it by suffering suggesting it is an end in itself rather than a means to an end. Hopkins's pursuit of moral perfection characterised by rigour and subjugation of will is a presence one finds difficult to perceive in his monastic poems about the cloistered life. In 'Heaven- Haven,' nothing could be more peaceful than the heavenly sanctuary the nun seeks,

I HAVE desired to go Where springs not fail, To field where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow. 16

'The Habit of Perfection' reinforces how cite the monastic attraction was to Hopkins at the time. The poem is about a quest towards moral perfection but it is viewed as a kind of passive inaction. Perfection is "still" without event and in the first three stanzas the inclination is towards the inner life to which the exterior world is a distraction. Although the next three stanzas seem to threaten this tranquillity they soon become so remote from imaginative realisation that it is difficult to read want or desire, into any of the allusions. Here there are no alternatives to the religious life and austerity has been so subtly and securely entered into that the feet seem to lack rather than desire the grass, (grass which draws in the softness of "plushy" only to reject it again in the blades of "sward").

The continuing impression is of a controlling direction based on abstinence and ritual. The feast in the final stanza is a matter of ritual: there is nothing festive about a poem whose tone is more suited to the fasts of an earlier stanza. Hopkins attraction to this kind of oppositional life is clear from the first line, as is his great need for the discipline and abstinence that religious life offered. The spring of 1865 saw a major distraction to Hopkins's search for moral and spiritual perfection.

This came in the form of Digby Dolben, a cousin of Hopkins's long-term friend Robert Bridges. Dolben was hoping to matriculate to Balliol the following year and Bridges had introduced him to Hopkins who was to help familiarise him with the university. Dolben had a religious enthusiasm that was excessive in the eyes of most of his contemporaries, but Hopkins was captivated by the overwrought devotionalism and attraction to sacrifice of the young man. Bridges himself gives the impression that ritual and costume rather than doctrine attracted Dolben.

In any case Hopkins had shown an infatuation with the seventeen year old since the moment Bridges had introduced them. Dolben also indulged in religious poetry, the chief object of which was the human and masculine aspect of Christ. This he dwelt on so fervently that at times the traditional aspects of religious poetry as love poetry are extended beyond any recognisable legitimate boundary.

Thou, my own Beloved, Take me home to rest; Whisper words of comfort, Lay me on Thy Breast. 17

Although they were only together for a few days at Oxford Hopkins was later depressed by a deep sense of sinfulness, more probably from recognising the nature of his own feelings rather than from any specifically culpable act.

In any case much of much of what he had to face was a cite physical attraction to Dolben, as is made clear by the poetry he wrote after Dolben had left Oxford and by the entries in his private diaries. It has been suggested, by two Hopkins scholars, Sullaway and Martin that there was a breach between Dolben and Hopkins 18 possibly brought about by Hopkins revealing his passions and feelings for the young man that were not reciprocated. Dolben had long been infatuated by a school friend Gosselin, the muse for many of his poems and his apparent snub of Hopkins was the gentlest way of showing his lack of interest.

Hopkins however was devastated, finally driven to enlist Bridge's support like a lovesick adolescent "Give my love to Dolben, I have written letters to the latter without end without even a whiff of answer. 19 Dolben was never to attend Balliol having failed the entrance examination but the split was to have a lasting effect on Hopkins. Three months after Dolben left Oxford Hopkins wrote one of his most personal poems so far. Poem 13 is a sonnet that reads like a dirge to all the possibilities of temporal love that had once been possibilities for him.

Where art thou friend, whom I shall never see,
Conceiving whom I must conceive amiss?
Or sundered from my sight in an age that is
Or far off promise of a time to be ... 20

There is obvious comparison here with the "terrible sonnets" where the lost friend is Christ but the lost friend here is clearly a more mortal one. Thou who can best accept the certainty That thou hadst borne proportion in my bliss 20

This poem suggests a private grief and sorrow, which were to be the hallmarks of Hopkins's poetry after Dolben's departure in the winter of 1865. His poetry now deals almost exclusively with the themes of loss, leave taking, weeping, renunciations, fear of the devil, his disgust with the world of the flesh, and cries to God for some "authentic cadence." 22

The sceptic disappointment and the loss A boy feels when the poet he pores upon Grows less and less sweet to him, and knows no cause. 24

Hopkins already drawn to sacrifice and suffering now had the added impetus of guilt to inflict upon himself, something he takes to with fervour in sonnet 16 'Myself unholy, from myself unholy.' Here he traces an omnipresent sense of sin in not only his friends but also in himself and whilst each friend has one sin, he has accumulated all sins

He has a sin of mine, he its near brother; Knowing them well I can but see the fall. This fault in one I found, that in another: And so, though each have one while I have all 25

He eventually decides to turn to the love of Christ since nothing mortal can be trusted. Throughout the rest of 1865 almost all of Hopkins's poetry shows his coming to terms with what he realises was to be a solitary life. This rejection, was for Hopkins, a permanent unalterable decision to expunge himself of all the needs of his physical and emotional nature and dedicate himself to Christ. This dedication could be seen as the seed of the recurrent description of himself as a eunuch detailing in his poetry his sense of impotence and sterility. The imagery was already anticipated in December 1865 when he wrote :

Trees by their yield Are known, but I- My sap is sealed, My root is dry. If life within I none can shew (Except for sin), Nor fruit above, - It must be so- I do not love2626

It is probably because of this self-inflicted sensual constraint that there is from this time, a noticeable increase in sexual imagery in his religious works. Looking at a sonnet number 17 written the previous 26 th of June one can begin to appreciate the buried sexual content still apparent after the departure and neglect of Dolben only a few months before. 'See how Spring opens with disabling cold,' takes for its reference the parables of the sower in Matthew 13. It is widely suggested that this sonnet, written at a time where Hopkins was coming to his final decision about becoming a Catholic, alludes to his unfruitful years as a Protestant and his subsequent regret. Although the coming conversion may have supplied the overt content, the effect of his emotional upheavals over Dolben may have unconsciously supplied the language, the imagery and the sexual tension. Like 'Trees by their yield,' it is difficult to avoid the sexual connotations implied by seed squandered for no purpose. The hopelessness of any yield or crop makes the imagery just as barren as the seedless eunuch whose more striking presence dominates other poems.

See how Spring opens with disabling cold,
And hunting winds and long-lying snow.
Is it a wonder if the buds are slow?
Or where is strength to make the leaf unfold?
Chilling remembrance of my days of old
Afflicts no less, what yet I hope may blow,
That seed which the good sower once did sow,
So loading with obstruction that threshold
Which should ere now have lead my feet to the field.
It is a waste done in unreticent youth
Which makes so small the promise of that yield
That I may win with late-learned skill uncouth
From furrows of the poor and stinting weald.
Therefore how bitter, and learnt how late, t26

In the lines before the couplet the reference to "It is the waste done in unreticent youth," allows the sexual undercurrent to spring again to the surface, particularly when one is aware that waste was a Victorian euphemism for masturbation. The contention can be made that it is not surprising that Hopkins's religious emotions contain sexual metaphors in view of the fact that he had spent a large part of his adult life subduing those instincts, but what is surprising is the intensity and strength with which they asserted themselves far beyond his conscious volition. It also indicates the constancy of will with which Hopkins was able to resist and curtail those temptations and the resulting despair this caused him.

Hopkins's sense of duty inspired him try and control his feelings for Dolben, make a commitment to Christ and privately at least to the Roman Catholic Church. He was however by the beginning of November 1865 still unable to make the resolution to abstain from thoughts of Dolben as this confusing statement testifies. "On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I have his leave for it; also Dolben's letter came for which Glory to God."28 This seemingly contradictory statement tells us a lot about Hopkins and his inner turmoil, especially as the statements occur in the same sentence. The first part has usually been taken as a prediction of his determination to stop writing poetry but it also sounds like a termination of his relationship with Dolben.

The second part is a barely contained delight at receiving one of Dolben's infrequent letters. A more probable explanation however is that of Norman White's29 who regarded the letter as a reaction to Dolben's correspondence that most likely contained one of his usual short-term ascetic self-restrictions that he encouraged on Hopkins. It is an indication of how formidable Dolben's influence was that Hopkins would want to emulate his sacrifice. Hopkins was never able to renounce his absent friend and seems to have associated Dolben and poetry until they became almost indistinguishable. The poetry of the last ten months of 1865 can be seen as a mechanism through which Hopkins dealt with the pain in his own life by consciously or unconsciously redirecting it into his poetry. It is noticeable that from this time on that the "Parnassian," or competent poetry, that borrowed greatly from Keats, Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, is replaced by Hopkins's own individual and distinctive style, that transforms the physical into the spiritual. Hopkins's poetry would from here on be distinguished by a uniqueness that would not be bound by the normal rhythms used by his contemporaries. His poetry would encapsulate a philosophy that would define God in nature and require a new vocabulary to attest to the immanence of Christ in the nature that surrounds us.

The words "inscape" and "instress" are now synonymous with Hopkins but it is his attraction to being dominated by the power of his Saviour and his willingness to submit himself to self-torment and denial in order to experience that power that sets Hopkins's poetry apart and marks it as great. On Christmas day of 1865 Hopkins wrote out a short prayer poem to Christ asking him to be freed fro "the self that I have been," (30) (l.5) perhaps indicative of his resolve to become a Roman Catholic and devote himself to Christ. He was to do so the following year. At Birmingham, on the twenty-first of October, when Dr. Newman received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church. Hopkins had taken the first step on a journey that would lead him to the Jesuits and compel him to burn his early poetry as a symbolic act of renunciation of his old ways, the "Slaughter of the innocents," as he referred to it did not totally erase his early work as copies had been circulated to Bridges and other friends. He was now set on a course which would see him write no poetry for seven years save some religious celebratory verses and dedicate his life solely to the service of his God. The last impediment to this was removed when on June 28 th, 1868, when Digby Dolben drowned in a swimming accident.

What psychological traits in the development of the man moulded the poet can only be hinted at here. Certainly the father influence seems to have played an enormous part in the defining of Hopkins and his poetry and his tendency for isolation and social separateness may also be linked to his early relationships but what endured was a scrupulous and exacting personality taken to the ends of masochism by a self-critical and ultimately debilitating moral fastidiousness. This trait would develop and change with his later poetry as he continuously sought an imminence with Christ and his suffering. His personality is probably best summed up by a passage from ' St. Winefred's Well' where Hopkins's own experience may well have been verbalised by Caradoc

Yes, To hunger and not to have, yét / hope ón for, to storm and Strive and Be at every assault fresh foiled, / worse flung, deeper Disappointed, The turmoil and the torment, / it has, I swear, a sweetness, Keeps a kind of joy in it, / a zest, an edge, an ecstacy, Next after sweet success (Act 2 ls. 69-76)31

Notes

  1. Karl Jung, A. Storr, (ed.) Jung: Selected Writings , (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Press, 1989.) p. 246
  2. Gardner and Mackenzie eds. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Fourth Edition (London: Oxford University Press 1967.) Hereafter referred to as P. "Myself unholy, from myself unholy" No. 16 ls. 13-14
  3. Elizabeth W. Schneider, The Dragon in the Gate: Studies in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins , (Berkley and Los Angeles, University of California Press,1968) p. 5
  4. Ibid. P. 4 5. p.No.1 page 3 7. Robert ,Bernard Martin. Gerard Manley Hopkins A Very Private Life (London, Harper Collins,1991) pps. 17-18, Hereafter cited as Martin 8 ibid page 15 9. p. No.77 page 111
  5. This may have been influenced by Hopkins's early schoolboy infatuation with Alexander Strachey a fellow pupil at Highgate who seemingly spurned the involvement, much to the chagrin of Hopkins. See Martin pps,18-19 12 . p. No. 7 page 18 13 . Martin pps. 57 – 58 14. p. No. 11 page 20 15 . ibid. No. 24 page35 16 . p. No. 9 page 19 17. Martin p. 86
  6. Alison Sullaway Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Victorian Temper (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972) p 50 See also Martin p. 96 Both authors make the conjecture that there was a division between Hopkins and Dolben after their initial meeting which invariably hurt Hopkins more than Dolben. Martin surmises that Hopkins had made his desires clear to Dolben who rejected him causing the rift.
  7. C.C.Abbott, The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges . (London, Oxford University Press, 1935 ) p.1 August 28 th 1865 Henceforth abbreviated to L.1. 20 . p. No. 13 page 22 21 . ibid 22. ibid. no. 19 page 28 23 . p. page 250 24 . p. no. 14 page 24 25 . p. No. 16 page 26 26 . p. No.127 page 169 27 . p. No.17 page 26 28 Martin page 105 29 Norman White Hopkins: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) p. 128. 30. p. No.129 page 170 31 p. page 191




Links to 2008 Hopkins Festival Lectures

Editing Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fancy in Hopkins Poetics

Hopeful Hopkins

Dolben and Hopkins

Dancer Isadora Duncan and Hopkins Poetry

Hopkins and Water Imagery

The Dark Sonnets

Hopkins Interpretation

A Scottish Reading of Hopkins Poetry

John Henry Newman and Translation


Lectures from GM HOPKINS FESTIVAL 2023


Links to other 2012 Hopkins Literary Festival Lectures


Lectures from Hopkins Literary Festival July 2022


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