Course Details

"Who?" A Victorian Jesuit, he died young, his stunning verse-making innovations appreciated posthumously; recognised as one of the most original English poets of his century; virtually a Modernist, he had a marked influence on such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis. Over the week we'll make a summer picnic of 15 or more of his poems, accessing material via online resources. We will generally eschew biography, theology, psychological interpretation, technical deconstruction. Participants with skills in poetical analysis will not be discouraged but the emphasis will be on the beauty of Hopkins' imagery and his astonishing use of language. This study group has a high class size capacity.