Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

L I T E R A R Y S T U D I E S
Hopkins’s Poetics of
Speech Sound
Sprung Rhythm, Lettering, Inscape
Loving in Verse
Poetic Influence as Erotic
Stephen Guy-Bray
James I. Wimsatt
Although virtually unknown in his lifetime,
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) is counted
today among the great nineteenth-century poets.
His poetry was collected and published posthumously
by his friend Robert Bridges in 1917,
and subsequently Hopkins’s reputation flowered,
though more as a modern writer than as Victorian,
and very little as a poetic theorist. Yet the body of
Hopkins’s critical writing reveals sharp insight into
the subject of poetics, and presents an innovative
theory that locates primary poetic meaning in
‘figures of speech sound.’
These ‘figures of speech sound’ provide the
focus for James I. Wimsatt’s erudite and original
study. Drawing from Hopkins’s diaries, letters, student
essays, and correspondence with poet-friends,
Wimsatt illuminates Hopkins’s theory that the
sound of poetic language carries an emotional, not
merely logical and grammatical, meaning. Wimsatt
concentrates his study on Hopkins’s writings
about ‘sprung rhythm,’ ‘lettering,’ and ‘inscape,’
– his coinages – and makes abundant reference to
Hopkins’s verse, showing how it exemplifies his language
theory. A well-researched and highly detailed
book, Hopkins’s Poetics of Speech Sound asserts major
significance for a relatively neglected aspect of this
important poet’s writings.
James I. Wimsatt is a professor emeritus in the
Department of English at the University of Texas
at Austin.
The current critical tendency in the study of
Renaissance literature is to regard the relationship
between a poet and his predecessor as either
familial or antagonistic. Stephen Guy-Bray argues
that neither of these models can be applied to all
poetic relationships and that, in fact, the romantic
and even sexual nature of some relationships must
be considered.
Loving in Verse examines how three poets present
their relationship to their most important
predecessors, beginning with Dante’s use of Virgil
and Statius in the Divine Comedy, moving on to
Spenser’s use of medieval English poets in the Faerie
Queene, and finally addressing Hart Crane’s use of
Whitman in The Bridge. In each case, Guy-Bray
shows how the younger poet presents himself and
the older poet as part of a male couple. He goes
on to demonstrate how male couples are, in fact,
found throughout these poems, and while some
are indeed familial or hostile, many are romantic
or sexual. Using concepts from queer theory and
close readings of images and allusions in these
texts, Loving in Verse demonstrates the importance
of homoeroticism to an examination of poetic
influence. A discussion of the theories of poetic
influence from four twentieth-century writers (T.S.
Eliot, Harold Bloom, Roland Barthes, and Frank
O’Hara) concludes Guy-Bray’s analysis.
Stephen Guy-Bray is an associate professor in the
Department of English at the University of British
Columbia.
Approx. 192 pp / 6 x 9 / November 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9154-7 / 978-0-8020-9154-3
£28.00 $45.00 E
Approx. 184 pp / 6 x 9 / December 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9203-9 / 978-0-8020-9203-8
£28.00 $45.00 E
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