"Hopkins's "The Windhover
Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4376178 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Cosgrove (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 437-464 |
| Publication date | 2004-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/03335372-25-3-437 |
| OpenAlex | W2148818116 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 13 |
This article analyzes some of the problematics of allegorical reading and suggests a method of reading poetry by paying attention to the impenetrable"thingness" of tropes and figures, using as an example a poem notorious for the prevalence of allegory in the history of its interpretations, "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Contending that the variety of the interpretations of this sonnet reveal the inconsistency and arbitrariness of the allegorical method, I also draw attention to commentators' lack of rigorous understanding of the allegorical pretext, the failure to distinguish between allegory and symbol,allegoresis, and typology. A study of the lability of the terms used to advance the Christological reading reveals that they do not sustain a reference to a single emblematic figure and, extrapolating more broadly from this discovery, that allegorical readings in general have severe drawbacks. In conclusion, I propose that the "ungrammaticality" of "The Windhover'"s tropes and the importance of the notion of"thing" puts Hopkins in proximity to the problems of the later modernist poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, who struggle with the paradoxical ability of the conceptualizing power of mind to simultaneously apprehend an external object and to distance us further from it
Allegory · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Poetry · Politics · Pretext · Sonnet · The Thing · Typology · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory
Scenes from the drama of European literature
The Situation of Poetry
Anatomy of Criticism
The Language of Allegory
History of Western Philosophy
A Theory of Allegory beyond Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man; with Some Remarks on Allegory and Memory
A Deconstructionistic reading of ‘the Windhover’
Allegory, Myth and Symbol
Alliteration and Hopkins's Sprung Rhythm
Literally Speaking, or, the Literal Sense from Augustine to Lacan
The Political Unconscious
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |