Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Poems

C J Ackerley

Humanities-Ebooks LLP · AI-narrated by Alistair (from Google)

About this audiobook

This thoroughly insightful audio guide offers a detailed study and commentary on the poetry of Hopkins, exploring the significance of contemporary cultural issues and the poet's life as Catholic convert and Jesuit priest.

Part 1, Life and Times, traces Hopkins's life from his early schooldays, his undergraduate years at Oxford and conversion to Catholicism, to his work as a Jesuit scholar and poet-priest.

Part 2, Literary Strategies, explains the core principles of Hopkins's innovative and challenging poetry, including sections on inscape, interests and sprung rhythm.

Part 3, Reading Hopkins, provides a detailed critical commentary on most of the major poems: The Wreck of the Deutschland, God's Grandeur, The Starlight Night, As Kingfishers, Spring, The Sea and the Skylark, In the Valley of the Elwy, The Windhover, Pied Beauty, The Caged Skylark, Hurrahing in Harvest, The Lantern out of Doors, Duns Scotus's Oxford, Binsey Poplars, Henry Purcell, The Candle Indoors, Felix Randal, Spring and Fall, Inversnaid, Ribblesdale, To What Serves Mortal Beauty, Patience, the six 'Terrible Sonnets', Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves, Harry Ploughman, Tom's Garland, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire, 'Thou art indeed just', 'To R.B.' 

Part 4, Critical Reception, explores the history of Hopkins criticism from that of his own contemporaries to twentieth century and current critical approaches. This section also provides a guide to further reading and some useful websites.

About the author

Chris Ackerley took his BA and MA at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and his PhD at the University of Toronto. He has taught at the University of Otago, New Zealand, since 1976, and was Head of Department 2001 - 03. His speciality is annotation, particularly of the works of Malcolm Lowry and Samuel Beckett. His books include: A Companion to' Under the Volcano (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1984); Demented Particulars: The Annotated' Murphy' (1998; 2nd ed., rev. Tallahassee, FL: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2004); The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (London: Faber & Faber, 2006) with S. E. Gontarski; and Obscure Locks, SimpleKeys: The Annotated' Watt' (Tallahassee, FL: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2005).