F. R. Leavis (essay date 1932)
SOURCE: "Gerard Manley Hopkins" in New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation, Chatto & Windus, 1938, pp. 159-93.
[Leavis is an influential contemporary critic. In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1932, he claims that Hopkins' strength lies in his attempt to bring poetry closer to living speech.]
Hopkins's originality was radical and uncompromising: there was, as he owns, some excuse for the dismay of his first readers. He could not himself, as the...
Source: Poetry Criticism, ©1997 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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