Hopkins Against History

Scrutinizing the claim frequently made by critics that literary forms represent forms of consciousness Eugene Hollahan attempts in Hopkins Against History a double-edged project. He applies popular critical methods - psychoanalytical New Historical interdisciplinary and the like - as procedures in an examination of that rare poetic spirit Gerard Manley Hopkins.At the same time and dialectically the author uses Hopkins's life and oeuvre as a test case or paradigm case by which to measure some of the critical methods that attract much interest today.Hopkins Against History presents a new perspective on Gerard Manley Hopkins the self-conscious unbordered soul struggling against history but in the process becoming a kind of antithetical hero producing poems in sprung rhythm a strange new poetic of lasting value.