Lovescape Crucified: A Study of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lovescape Crucified illuminates an important segment of late nineteenth century British poetry, especially the religious poetry and poetics of Gerard Manley Hopkins. This study deals comprehensively with Hopkin’s major and minor works in the anglophone literary tradition, and firmly centers his aesthetics against the background of late nineteenth century developments in science and idealist philosophy in England. This book has grown out of the need to focus on the full range of his literary enterprise in view of the tremendous critical potential unleashed by the new wave of postmodernist critical theory. In a nutshell, this study seeks to employ the tools of deconstructionist critique in the analysis of Hopkinsian poetics and tries to explain how an orthodox approach to his poetry might be revised for a better understanding of the issues, lying behind his poetic theory and practice. The author hopes that the fresh orientation offered by this study will be intellectually stimulating both to students, as well as to those, engaged in research.