“Gorged with Proof”
This essay examines the narrated recollections of the spy in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s unfinished poem “A soliloquy of one of the spies left in the wilderness” (1863). Particular attention is paid to the spy’s account of the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings and slavery in Egypt in order to examine Ho...
| Published in: | Religion and the arts |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Religion and the arts
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hopkins, Gerard Manley 1844-1889, A soliloquy of one of the spies left in the wilderness
/ Exodus
/ Experience of religion
/ Desorientierung
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| Further subjects: | B
Hopkins
dramatic soliloquy
Exodus narrative
locus amoenus
rebellion
will
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This essay examines the narrated recollections of the spy in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s unfinished poem “A soliloquy of one of the spies left in the wilderness” (1863). Particular attention is paid to the spy’s account of the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings and slavery in Egypt in order to examine Hopkins’s depiction of a will in rebellion against God. After considering the poem’s relationship to Hopkins’s undergraduate years in light of his imminent conversion to Catholicism, the essay investigates the ways in which the soliloquy’s confused chronologies and emendations call attention to the spy’s spiritual disorders. By reading the spy’s internal disorder as a corollary to the social disintegration in Eden that Hopkins identified in Adam and Eve’s rebellion, the essay argues that the soliloquy attributes the speaker’s inner disorientation to his rebellious will set against God. Although the soliloquy appropriates descriptions of the lush Canaanite landscape to describe Egyptian slavery as comfortable, even luxurious, the vestiges of violence repeatedly interrupt the soliloquy’s relentless insistence on Egypt’s “pleasance.” As the soliloquy’s rhetorical maneuvers repeatedly fail to justify the spy’s rebellion, Hopkins explores and displays the impact of spiritual rebellion on the human psyche. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | In: Religion and the arts
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02204005 |