Hopkins Re-Constructed: Life, Poetry, and the Tradition

This book is a lively defense of Gerard Manley Hopkin's poetry against scholars, critics, and biographers who have overly-complicated or misread it. In detailed readings of several poems in a broad context, Lawler argues vigorously that Hopkins's poetry belongs to the mainstream of Western religious and nature poetry. He shows that it is comprehensible, powerful, and pleasurable if read with an open and informed mind.