Publisher's Synopsis
The "Gerard Manley Hopkins Annual, 1992" is published in association with the Hopkins Society, which sponsors the Gerard Manley Hopkins International Summer School held in Montasterevin, a few miles outside Dublin, Ireland. This annual is planned as the first to collect the best writings on Hopkins and his poetry written in a single year. The selections are not restricted to the papers delivered at the Summer School, but rather are chosen to capture its spirit and quality of scholarship. In his introduction to the work, Michael Sundermeier describes the contributions to the 1992 Annual. The first selection by the scholar and writer, Hugh Kenner, makes a surprising comparison between Hopkins and Alexander Pope. In "Hopkins and the County Kildare" Norman White aims to create a three-dimensional portrait of the poet in the later years of his life. Giuseppe Serpillo considers the difficulties of translating Hopkins into Italian. Michael Sundermeier's essay is an attempt to put Hopkins' attitude toward nature in historical perspective and to distinguish it from modern perspectives. The nature and quality of friendship, divine and human, expressed in Hopkins' work is the focus of the essay by Domenico Pezzini. Joseph Feeney traces Hopkins' life-long struggle with the Ignatian worldview which he acquired as a Jesuit. Russell Murphy illustrates Hopkins' position on poetry's ability to convey universal truth by positioning him, thematically, between Arnold and Teilhard. Finally, in the review section of the book, Jude Nixon, Ben Collins, Michael Allsopp, and Desmond Egan give thoughtful assessments of four major works on Hopkins.
