"God's Grandeur": Gerard Manley Hopkins' Reply to the Speculative Atheist

Abstract

Readers of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "God's Grandeur" use a consistent strategy to analyze the poem: they outline an intellectual system, usually one dominant when Hopkins was writing, and then use this system to interpret the sonnet. 2 For instance, Todd K. Bender reads the "ooze of oil" passage within the context of the mechanics of the hydraulic press, whereas the Victorian tendency of obstinate questioning best captures the mood and content of the poem, according to James Kincaid. 3 For Roger L. Slakey, the theological shift from a generic Old Testament God to the Incarnate God of the New Testament gives the reader the intellectual coordinates for understanding the sonnet's central energy, while Alison G. Sulloway reads the poem as Hopkins' commentary on "heretical Protestant England, still nationally unconverted to Catholicism." 4 As for Terry Eagleton, he sees in the poem Hopkins working through Catholicism's ambiguous attitude toward the consequences of the fall on nature. 5 Another intellectual context, however, sheds considerable light on the poem, and if my intuitions about the sonnet are right, we will have to reconsider some of the earlier claims about the poem.