from Part IV - Nature, Science, and the Environment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2025
Hopkins developed an ecological poetics informed by evolutionary theory, energy physics, and Catholic theology, bearing witness to local devastations of an unsustainable Victorian global economy. His sensitivity to such degradation was heightened by exposure to a range of polluted regions and by the effort to convey poetically his embodied perception of environmental features and patterns. His poems present everything from flashing bird wings, to waves, to wheat fields as dynamically interrelated through the flow of energy, and therefore vulnerable to its squandering by human industry. Such waste is both ecologically and spiritually self-destructive for Hopkins, given that Christ is incarnate in every fibre and force of the material world. His later sonnet ‘Ribblesdale’ manifests these concerns by lamenting a river valley poisoned and denuded by globally destructive industry and industrialized agriculture, even as it affirms vulnerable, accountable membership in a wounded terrestrial body that is divinely indwelt.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.