Revisiting a Victorian Poet: Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ecocritical and Religious Echoes

Abstract

The article starts from the claims of some ecocritical theoreticians that Christianity may be considered among the roots of the belief that man masters the earth (at least in the West) and thus justifies the current environmental crisis. But even these critics feel the need to provide role models of environmental concern from the list of saintly figures of the Christian tradition. In an age completely enthusiastic about the union between science and technology, the Victorian Age, the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote sonnets that may be read through the ecocritical lens at a time when the concept had not been invented. The conclusions of the essay point out the relevance of the emergence of ecococritical studies in the 1980s, showing thus how literary studies, religion and spirituality join environmental concerns and contribute to man’s fair appreciation and treatment of nature.