THE IMAGE OF GOD IN G. M. HOPKINS’ S SONNETS

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN G. M. HOPKINS’ S SONNETS

Tica, Dijana

Gerard Manley Hopkins is a Victorian poet who became popular in the twentieth century, after the posthumous publication of his poems in 1918. He was born into an Anglo-Catholic family with artistic leanings, but during his university days he joined the famous Oxford Movement and converted to Catholicism in 1866. In 1868 he became a Jesuit priest and dedicated the rest of his life to God and the church. Upon becoming a priest, Hopkins decided to burn all of his poems, believing that this kind of work was not appropriate for his new profession. However, seven years later he realised that poetry could be used as a tool for praising God and justifying his ways, so he began writing again. The predominant topic of his poems is the connection between God and nature, which he saw as another manifestation of God. He invented the term “inscape”, which he defined as a specific quality that makes every person, object or emotion unique; and another term, “instress”, which is our perception or recognition of this uniqueness of the world. In his opinion, the beauty of the Universe lies in its variety, and it comes from God because he manifests himself differently in all of us. The aim of this paper will be to analyse the images of God that Hopkins uses in his three famous sonnets: “God’s Grandeur”, “The Windhover”, and “Pied Beauty”. Keywords: God, instress, inscape, variety, nature.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3398