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Hopkins’ idealism: philosophy, physics, poetry

Hopkins’ idealism: philosophy, physics, poetry
Hopkins’ idealism: philosophy, physics, poetry
The conventional picture of the young Hopkins as a conservative High-Church ritualist is starkly contested by this study which draws upon his unpublished Oxford essays on philosophy to reveal a boldly speculative intellectual liberal. Less concerned with Christian factionalism than with countering contemporary threats to faith itself, Hopkins' thought is seen to follow that of his teachers Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green, who turned to Kant and Hegel to vouchsafe the grounds of Christian belief against contemporary scientism. Hopkins' personal metaphysic of 'inscape' and 'instress', which has long been recognized as crucial to the understanding of his poetry, is traced here to concepts derived from the 'British Idealism' he encountered at Oxford and the new energy physics of the 1850s and 1860s. By locating his thought at the intellectual avant-garde of his age, the striking modernity of his poetry need no longer be seen as an historical anomaly. The book offers radical re-readings not only of his metaphysics and theology, but also of his best-known poems
978-0-19-818353-2
Clarendon Press
Brown, Daniel
9782df03-dbb1-45e9-b6f3-626f397ad0c3
Brown, Daniel
9782df03-dbb1-45e9-b6f3-626f397ad0c3

Brown, Daniel (1997) Hopkins’ idealism: philosophy, physics, poetry , Oxford, GB. Clarendon Press, 360pp.

Record type: Book

Abstract

The conventional picture of the young Hopkins as a conservative High-Church ritualist is starkly contested by this study which draws upon his unpublished Oxford essays on philosophy to reveal a boldly speculative intellectual liberal. Less concerned with Christian factionalism than with countering contemporary threats to faith itself, Hopkins' thought is seen to follow that of his teachers Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green, who turned to Kant and Hegel to vouchsafe the grounds of Christian belief against contemporary scientism. Hopkins' personal metaphysic of 'inscape' and 'instress', which has long been recognized as crucial to the understanding of his poetry, is traced here to concepts derived from the 'British Idealism' he encountered at Oxford and the new energy physics of the 1850s and 1860s. By locating his thought at the intellectual avant-garde of his age, the striking modernity of his poetry need no longer be seen as an historical anomaly. The book offers radical re-readings not only of his metaphysics and theology, but also of his best-known poems

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Published date: 6 February 1997
Organisations: English

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Local EPrints ID: 375519
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/375519
ISBN: 978-0-19-818353-2
PURE UUID: ef3734f8-30c7-47fd-b66c-0f4744127bc7

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Date deposited: 09 Apr 2015 09:45
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 06:19

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