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"[A] VIRGINAL TONGUE HOLD": HOPKINS'S THE WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND AND MURIEL SPARK'S THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS

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From: Renascence
Date: 20050701
Author:Nixon, Jude V

WILLIAM Butler Yeats's introduction to The Oxford Book of Modem Verse (1936) sees Hopkins virtually "unknown" to those who "began to think and read in the late eighties of the last century" (v).1 Yeats read Hopkins "with great difficulty," and was bothered especially by his diction, the "faint sound that strains the ear." Yet, the release of Hopkins's poems in 1918 "made 'sprung verse' the fashion, and now his influence has replaced that of Hardy and Bridges" (xxxix). Yeats's disparaging view of Hopkins was meant to clear poetic space and to distance himself from a dominant precursor, so ...

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