Abstract

Since 1983 scholars and critics of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, especially the Yale critics, "have 'decentered' the representation of the religious experience in the poems and 'foregrounded' the problematics of representation in language" . This dissertation will show that Hopkins revitalized the consideration of the religious experience through certain theories of John Duns Scotus; it will attempt also to demonstrate that through the incorporation of Franciscan ideas, augmented by the writings of the Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus, Hopkins created a nature poetry which is in its perspective and scope essentially Franciscan. ;Until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, theologians and philosophers taught that the Creator could be seen, though not understood, in creation and He should be praised for that creation. They taught that humans, finite and dependent, could find union with the Creator only through faith since this union was considered to be a supernatural act. They maintained that since creation was also finite and dependent, it could not lead to union with the Creator. This belief was shaken with the advent of St. Francis of Assisi who not only reveled in God's creation and praised Him for it but also saw creation as a means of union with the Creator, always mindful that the Creator was behind the creation and not the creation itself. The followers of Francis, especially John Duns Scotus, categorized, emphasized, and elaborated his ideas through Scotus's doctrine of creation and his theories of the unicity of God, of which the primacy of Christ is a branch, and of individuation. ;Scotus acted as an instrument by which Hopkins became imbued with the ideas of Francis of Assisi. Although a Jesuit, Hopkins incorporated these Franciscan ideas into his nature poetry using inscape and instress as vehicles to obtain his goals. ;The key to Hopkins's nature poetry is the Franciscan ideas which unlock the message therein. This Franciscan message transformed Hopkins's life so that he not only lived it himself but spread it to others through his nature poetry. This dimension gives readers a new life and new hope as well as a better understanding of the poetry