37 pages • 1 hour read
Gerard Manley HopkinsThe Windhover
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Introduction
“The Windhover”
- Originally Published: 1918
- Form/Meter: Sonnet/Sprung Rhythm
- Literary Devices: Alliteration, Metaphor, Description, Juxtaposition, Allusion
- Setting: Outdoors
- Central Concern: Devotion to Christ and putting religion ahead of everything else
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: This is a Christian poem about devotion to Jesus Christ
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet
- Bio: British poet born in 1844 in London; lived and wrote in the Victorian era; left the Anglican Church for Roman Catholicism while attending Oxford; joined the priesthood (Jesuit order) in 1877 after years of study; taught and wrote poetry during his tenure in Ireland at the Jesuits’ University College; died of typhoid in 1889; fame achieved posthumously with publication of his poems in 1918 by friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges
- Other Works: “God’s Grandeur” (1918); “Pied Beauty” (1918); “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (1918)
THEMES
- 1 - Awe
- 2 - The Relationship Between the Natural and the Spiritual
- 3 - Spiritual Epiphany
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