Voicing the Silence of the Stigmatised: Communication with the Landscape in Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Abstract

Most human beings continue to erroneously claim speech and communication as exclusive attributes of the supposed superior human race, presumably due to humanity’s adherence to the dominant anthropocentric teachings of the Great Chain of Being. The voices or articulations of other living beings such as animals, birds, insects and the flora (trees and grass), here considered as the stigmatised are ignored or simply rendered inexistent by humans. This paper investigates he communicative abilities of landscape beings as delineated in selected poems of Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins. It adopts the ecocritical views of Cheryll Glotfelty, Christopher Manes and Michael J. McDowell to argue that the notion speech and communication is not limited to humans. The paper stresses that non-human beings are endowed with the ability to communicate and that it is possible for humans to learn the language of other beings for mutual communication. It further stresses that an understanding of the speech and communication potentials of the non-human neighbours of humankind would trigger a reconsideration of the ‘inferior’ position human beings have ascribed to other creatures. The paper emphasises that keen observation of the behaviour, facial expressions and postures of non-humans would facilitate the understanding of their language and communication. It equally sees Manes’ and McDowell’s ecocritical discourses as suitable perspectives to be adopt in order to fill the existing communication gap between humans and other landscape beings. The paper concludes that mutual communication between landscape beings would curb the indifference, negligence and, above all, the cruelty the supposed stigmatised ‘inferior’ non-human beings endure from human beings.