OLLI0149 - Finding God in all Creation: the Sacramental Poetics of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Course Description

The 19th century British Jesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, (1844- 1889) is acknowledged as an incarnational-literary theological-grammarian who aspired to reveal the sacramental properties of nature and to translate these revelations into verses that have been described as “verbal arabesques.” As proclaimed by the psalmist David in the nineteenth psalm, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims God’s handiwork; day discourses of it today; night to night hands on the knowledge.” Hopkins participates in the sacred “discourse” with the Mystery of Creation by composing experimental verses that herald the modern period of literature. In this course we shall study Hopkins as an innovator in versification by reading and explicating poems from his canon that illustrate his virtuosity as a wordsmith and the depths of his theological imagination. This course will be recorded.