Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Performance of Resilience in the Face of Inner Conflict

Tim Noble

FULL TEXT

CC BY 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

ABSTRACT (en)

This article focuses on the “terrible sonnets” of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). It shows how these poems offer an insight into a particular form of agonistics. Hopkins struggles with his understanding of self, of God, and of language, transforming experience into a fundamental clash of hegemonic visions of the world. Through resilience, there is not reconciliation but a re-visioning (therefore remediatising) of the possibility of human existence, which finds its home in language. Hopkins thus works between sound and sight and places a spiritual dimension into the political conversation about the task of being human. This challenge to any reductive approach is also, the article argues, an expression of resilience.

KEYWORDS (en)

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Chantal Mouffe, agonistics, resilience, conflict resolution

DOI

https://doi.org/10.14712/2571452X.2025.70.14

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