'The Windhover' and the Patristic Exegetical Tradition

Abstract

In an effort to stress the need for more controlled reading of Hopkins' poetry, criticism of the last decade or so has emphasized some of the misunderstandings that may arise when we attempt to project our own attitudes and world views upon a writer whose fundamental vision may have been different from ours. A number of writers have drawn upon Thomistic, Loyolan, and Scotist philosophy, in order to relocate the poet in a theological tradition in which reality does not admit of the same proliferation of meanings that it does in our own relativistic (or pluralistic) universe. Since these analyses restrict themselves primarily to the poet's Christian-philosophical background, however, it seems appropriate that an attempt be made as well briefly to investigate his Christian-poetic background – that is, to examine characteristic approaches of the Church Fathers to the handling of symbol and metaphor – to discover whether in this area, too, the poet is operating within fairly circumscribed, if not pre-established boundaries. Both because it centres upon a single dominating symbol, and because it has received as varied an array of interpretations as any poem might hope to elicit, no poem of Hopkins yields so well to such an investigation as 'The Windhover.'