GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS AND OLD ENGLISH POETRY: A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

This dissertation traces the similarities between certain features in Old English poetry and in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins to show the extent of the influence of Old English literature on Hopkins' work. The nineteenth century witnessed a renaissance of interest in Old English language and literature, spurred in part by the efforts of John M. Kemble in the 1830s and 1840s. This patriotic revival of Old English studies was continued throughout the century in the works of such people as Joseph Bosworth, compiler of the first English edition of an Old English dictionary; Charles Richardson, philologist and champion of Horne Tooke; Edwin Guest, pioneer scholar of Old English metrics; R. C. Trench, one of the instigators of the New English Dictionary; William Barnes, parson, poet, and amateur philologist; Max Muller, Sanskrit scholar; George Perkins Marsh, American philologist; F. J. Furnivall, founder of the Early English Text Society; W. W. Skeat, indefatigable editor and etymologist; and Henry Sweet, perhaps the most important Old English scholar of the nineteenth century.;From 1863 or 1864 until the end of his life in 1889, Hopkins read widely in the works of such scholars, as well as in translations and originals of Old English literature, thereby attaining a sufficient knowledge of the techniques of Old English poetry to become the kind of Victorian scop his philological compatriots had called for. Although his early poetry shows little influence of Old English literature, it indicates his beginning experiments with metrics and alliteration. And beginning with The Wreck of the Deutschland, written in 1875, the metrics of most of Hopkins' poetry is stress-based, relying on a certain number of stresses per line rather than syllables, allowing for numerous instances of juxtaposed stresses in a line, and consisting mainly of "falling"--i.e., trochaic or dactylic--rhythms: in these ways his poetry is metrically quite similar to Old English poetry. In addition, the amount of alliteration in his poetry, including vocalic alliteration, gradually increased until by the end of his life he wrote several poems that contained alliteration in every line--the same practice found in Old English poetry. His alliteration in the poetry written after 1875 also often serves to reinforce rhythmical patterns in a line and to make semantic connections between words in a line: in other words, it functions in much the same ways as it does in Old English poetry. Another stylistic device that Hopkins' mature poetry shares with Old English poetry is the use of variation, a multiple statement of the same idea in different words--especially variation used for the enumeration of epithets for God and Christ. In addition, Hopkins' later poetry, which like Old English poetry was made to be recited, is syntactically intricate, employing numerous ellipses, unusual word order, and interchangeable parts of speech: in such ways the syntax seems designed to recapture the flexibility of an inflected language such as Old English. Finally, much of his diction, replete with substantive compounds, echoes the vocabulary and imagery of England's earliest poetry. In several ways, then, Hopkins' poetry, seemingly idiosyncratic and revolutionary, shows the strong influence of Old English poetry.