Relationship Among the Meaning Sturcture, the Image Structure, and the Sound Sturcture in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Graduation Date
Spring 1956
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
Denis Donoghue, in the Autumn issue of Studies, states the need of a re-assessment of the critical work that has been done on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. He believes that the hey-day of Hopkins-enthusiasts is over and that it is high time to evaluate the poetry in the light of a more thorough and direct analysis than the former critics have given. What Mr. Donoghue urges is that the critics take each poem and analyze it as an independent work, rather than use it as an illustration of Hopkins’ prosody or of his religious and philosophical thought, and so forth. He believes it is high time that we turn to a criticism of the poems themselves to determine their worth. For this, Mr. Donoghue feels, we need a reassessment of the critical work that has already been done on Hopkins’ poetry.
This dissertation is not concerned with such a re-assessment but with the examination of a single poem, such as Mr. Donoghue suggests. My main object is to analyze the sonnet ’’To what serves Mortal Beauty” from the point of view of its structural unity, to show the interrelationship among the three structures of poetry: the meaning structure, the image structure and the sound structure, and to point out how concerned Hopkins was with their unity. But at the same time, when such a structural unity has been evidenced, the corollary follows that this poem is in itself a successful work, existing in its own right as an artistic whole and not merely as an example of some particular technique or an illustration of some line of thought.