Part of The Student Room Group

  • Join over 1.2 million students every month
  • Accelerate your learning by 29%
  • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month

Analysis of 'The Windhover' poem by Gerard Hopkins

Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Please write a 1,500 word essay commenting closely on one of the following two texts. Your Answer should pay detailed attention to the text?s form, content and style. Text 1a: The Windhover "The Windhover" by Gerard Hopkins stands as one of his most influential poems to date. Though Hopkins wrote the poem around the year 1877, it was published in 1918 after his death. Before analysing this poem, it is important to understand the social and cultural backdrop of the time in which it was written, and in particular the poet's reasons for writing it. Hopkins himself stated that the poem ?was not based on real incident,? yet it seems apparent that his ?Roman Catholic identity in the Anglican culture that he chose to reject? undeniably had a detrimental impact to him, both as an individual, and a writer of the Victorian era. So much so, that family and friends disregarded him while even ?university posts and positions in the clergy were closed to him.? As a celibate priest torn between the incompatibility between his literary and religious duties, it is no surprise as to why religion resonates so heavily in Hopkins' poem. ...read more.

Middle

Hopkins uses this term as opposed to a more subtle term such as 'understood' for instance, to mirror his appreciation for natural beings. Although his rhetoric seems to glamorise the Windhover, his reference to other common creatures of nature; Kingfishers and Dragonflies in some of his other works underpin the notion that nature and natural beings are much more complex than they are given credit for. The regular rhyme scheme of the first stanza (?riding?, ?striding?, ?wing?, ?swing? and ?gliding?, ?hiding?) mimics the majestic movement of the bird and the linear pattern of life; however the intermitting break between the final two stanzas transitions it from a romantic hymn, into a religious one. Complemented with broken rhyme (dividing ?king-dom? to rhyme with ?wing?) and enjambment, Hopkins illustrates the unpredictability of the Windhover. Bristow, p. 174 elaborates that with such a style Hopkins created an ?inscape within his distinctive theological poetics, from a system of heavily stressed syllables that gave more vocal weight to a poetic line than either English grammar or traditional scansion would usually allow?[4]. Phrases such as ?minion? and ?kingdom? are quite archaic. ...read more.

Conclusion

The ?fire? is representative of life and personal desires, and Hopkins preaches of an obligation to God. Hopkins breaks away from the tradition of intimate love in this Petrarchan sonnet. Although the rhyme scheme used appears traditional, Hopkins adopts his own style, by deliberately ending every rhyme with ?-ing?, so that within the ?ABBA? rhyme scheme, even the ?A? and ?B? rhyme with each other. Perhaps the elusive path of the Windhovers' movement alludes metaphorically to Christ?s suffering. I see the poem overall as synthesising Hopkins? doubts concerning his religious duty and poetic inclinations. This may be considered a false dichotomy by many; yet the reading of the bible, the verse of the gospels, the language of the scripture and the performance of the sermon might all seem of one with the actions of a poet. Like how the Windhover ?rebuffed the big wind,? Jesus 'rebuffed' the Pharisees; ?I am with you for only a short time, and then I go to the one who sent me. Where I am, you cannot come? (John 7:33). The fact that the speaker interlopes "ah my dear" during this recollection reaffirms how, he himself has personally afflicted by Christ?s suffering. The Windhover stands as a microcosm for Christ, and subsequently God. ...read more.

The above preview is unformatted text

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our University Degree Other Poets section.

Found what you're looking for?

  • Start learning 29% faster today
  • 150,000+ documents available
  • Just £6.99 a month

or


Not the one? Search for your essay title...
  • Join over 1.2 million students every month
  • Accelerate your learning by 29%
  • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month

See related essaysSee related essays

Related University Degree Other Poets essays

  1. The Natural Cycle of Humanity and the Decay of Modern Society in The Wasteland

    Without time memories become meaningless repetitions and cease to exist. The epigram at the beginning of the poem introduces the immortal character Sibyl. Sybil is detached from the rest of the world by her cursed immortality and lives withering away and shriveled up, longing for death, the only escape from her suffering.

  2. How does Plath convey her alienation and increasing paranoia in the bee poems, focusing ...

    Therefore the use if the verbs running and "flying" convey how paranoid Plath was feeling. "The Bee Meeting" was completed on the 3rd October 1962 and was the first of the bee poems. It consists of five lines per a stanza until the last stanza that consists of 6 lines composing of three words "am I cold".

  1. How is context shown in T.S. Eliot's Preludes

    This is turn illustrates the notion that Eliot could not only be commenting on the lack of hygiene and bad living conditions in the city, but also on the sin and corruption prevalent in its society. As such one comes to see that Eliot views the society of that time

  2. Funeral Rites and Punishment are just two examples out of a great group of ...

    Heaney uses imagery to create a sympathetic view on the weak and fragile girl and with the use of "I can feel" shows that he is sharing her pain and agony. In the fifth and seventh stanzas Heaney does something similar to Funeral Rites, he beautifies the dead body and

  1. The Waste Land opens with a reference to Chaucers Canterbury Tales. In this case, ...

    and Dante's hell ("the flowing crowd of the dead"). The city is desolate and depopulated, inhabited only by ghosts from the past. Stetson, the apparition the speaker recognizes, is a fallen war comrade. The speaker pesters him with a series of ghoulish questions about a corpse buried in his garden: again, with the garden, we return to the theme of regeneration and fertility.

  2. An Analysis of "The Heart of Woman" by W.B. Yeats

    Instead, it is the person on the other end of the line that does the work. Also, ?me? in line 3 being the object and receiver shows how the woman expects the love and does not find the need to reciprocate love first.

  1. Discord in Childhood, by the British poet D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), is a poem ...

    Instead, nature here seems threatening and love seems replaced by hatred. The speaker?s reference to the ?terrible whips? of an ?ash-tree? already sets a violent tone for a poem full of violence of various kinds. Perhaps the speaker has in mind a so-called ?weeping ash tree,? whose branches hang almost

  2. The Influence of Nature and Roethkes Father on His Poetry

    Much of the poetry he wrote after The Greenhouse Poems contained content relating to nature and his particular experiences with plant life. In 1922 Roethke?s father and uncle sold their greenhouse after a family dispute. A few months later Roethke?s uncle committed suicide and within the next year his father died of cancer.

  • Over 160,000 pieces
    of student written work
  • Annotated by
    experienced teachers
  • Ideas and feedback to
    improve your own work