“Springs the Stress Felt”: Rhythm as a Priority Indicator of Subject and Object in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poetry

Abstract

This article aims to explicate the terms subjective and objectification while tracing the priority of subject or object in terms of stress patterns, specifically sprung rhythm in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. The theories of Duns Scotus, Walter Pater, and Romanticism influences Hopkins and the influence can be sensed in his rhythm and stress as a method to demonstrate the position of the poetic persona and object in Hopkins’ poetry. Hopkins’ two notions of inscape and instress are also hidden in speech of subject’s perception and conceiving of the object. The inscape (design) is in the object and instress is the intensified form of the stress with will. Thus, these two notions also include the combination of the concepts of poetic persona and his/her perception of the object. In other words, this article claims that Hopkins’ philosophy regarding subjectivity and objectification has a gap to be explored with his use of sprung rhythm in poetry. The priority of subject and object illustrates how these two are foregrounded with rhythmic patterns in Hopkins’ poetry. Hopkins’ own explanations provide a backbone for this article, and these have been clarified by subsequent scholarship that reveals the Romanticist influence in his poetry. Hopkins explains the meaning of inscape as “design and pattern” and his main aim in poetry. Ultimately, his two notions, inscape and instress, that emerge with sprung rhythm intersect to form the objectification on the eye of the beholder, or rather the subject or sometimes the poetic persona in his poetry.

Keywords

• subject
• object
• romanticism
• Hopkins's poetry
• sprung rhythm

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