Reading for Transformation through the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Abstract

In this essay, Francis X. McAloon, S.J., grounds himself in the hermeneutical writings of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and Christian spirituality/New Testament scholar Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, to propose an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of Christian poetic prayer texts that is rooted in Christian spiritual experience, informed by literary and theological scholarship, and focused upon the potential power of certain poems to function as texts for transformative prayer. The article applies McAloon’s methodology to a critical and existential engagement with Hopkins’ sonnet of despair, “To seem the stranger.”