• Down the Slant towards the Eye: Hopkins and Ecological Perception

    Author(s):
    Daniel Williams (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    LLC Victorian and Early-20th-Century English, TM Literary Criticism
    Subject(s):
    English poetry, Nineteenth century, Ecocriticism, Perception, Poetics
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    gerard manley hopkins, affordances, form, globe, Victorian poetry, Anthropocene
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/p8d5-gs16
    Abstract:
    This essay reads Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry for its “ecological perception”: a perceptual modality involving the dynamic interaction between human bodies and environmental givens or potentialities. Linking Hopkins’s syncretic ideas about perception to the psychologist J. J. Gibson’s account of our sensitivity to environmental “affordances,” the essay assesses three scales of ecological perception in Hopkins (arboreal, atmospheric, apocalyptic) and stresses the particular relevance of the intermediate (atmospheric) scale for our experience of environmental crisis. In “The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe,” Hopkins recognizes the “teleconnections” bridging global systems and specific sites without remaining rooted to the local or bioregional (arboreal) or rushing to a vantage beyond planetary confines (apocalyptic).
    Notes:
    In “Open Ecologies," ed. Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel. Special Issue of Victorian Literature and Culture ​48.1 (2020).
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    doi:10.1017/S1060150319000482
    Publisher:
    Cambridge University Press (CUP)
    Pub. Date:
    2020-2-17
    Journal:
    Victorian Literature and Culture
    Volume:
    48
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    127 - 154
    ISSN:
    1060-1503,1470-1553
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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