GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Web links and background

General introduction and overview.

You need to know about inscape and instress. Properly know: it looks really daft when you use these terms wrongly or indiscrimately!

Here's a quick start to that!

But you may get a better idea about inscape if you have a go yourself. This is an exercise from The Guardian's poetry Workshop page in which an Oxford professor talks about inscape and sets a task for writers. Have a go!

You'll find out sooner or later that these ideas - including the lovely Latin word haeccitas - are related to the philosophy of a friar, Duns Scotus.

Read more about Duns Scotus here. He was a Scottish Franciscan friar.

Hopkins became a Jesuit priest. You need to see how his poems relate - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively - to his faith.

Hopkins read and learnt Welsh, and learned a lot from the complex rhyme schemes of medieval Welsh poetry. What points emerge from reading his poems in this way?

Finally, for now, you need to know about what Hopkins called sprung rhythm. This is a way of composing poetry in lines which emphasises stress-patterns rather than syllables. Old, traditional ballads tend instinctively to use "spring rhythm".

Hopkins rhythms can be analysed at great length.

Other writers take a more open and emotional approach, such as Jeannette Winterson here.