Inspirations Unbidden: The Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins's "terrible sonnets," written during his anguished years in Dublin in 1885, stand as some of the most compelling yet perplexing works of Victorian poetry. These six sonnets, though brief, have earned a place of profound significance in literary history, rivaling the acclaim of The Wreck of the Deutschland and The Windhover. Hopkins himself, however, viewed them as failures—not in their poetic merit but in their deviation from the imaginative and religious goals that de...