Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ruskin's Idea of the Christian Artist
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Bernadette Waterman Ward
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
John Ruskin gave Gerard Manley Hopkins an aesthetic vocabulary imbued with Christian concepts of obedience, sacrifice, truth, and Divine Beauty. Even secular art is never morally neutral; Christian art has additional moral weight in the artist's reverence for God's self-revelation in creation. Hopkins's Scotism confirmed his conviction that an artist's work must be a responsible personal proclamation of truth about creation. Such moral responsibility discourages easy sentimentality but demands reverence for beauty. The depth of Hopkins's interaction with etymology, syntax, and sound springs from Ruskinian sacrificial expenditure of workmanship and reverence for what Ruskin called "truth" to materials. "Ashboughs," a cheerful, subtly Marian curtal sonnet, shows Hopkins's Ruskinian principles at work late in his life, especially in the poet's attention to diction, syntax, and divine truth revealed in concrete, worldly beauty. John Ruskin gave Gerard Manley Hopkins an aesthetic vocabulary imbued with Christian concepts of obedience, sacrifice, truth, and Divine Beauty. Even secular art is never morally neutral; Christian art has additional moral weight in the artist's reverence for God's self-revelation in creation. Hopkins's Scotism confirmed his conviction that an artist's work must be a responsible personal proclamation of truth about creation. Such moral responsibility discourages easy sentimentality but demands reverence for beauty. The depth of Hopkins's interaction with etymology, syntax, and sound springs from Ruskinian sacrificial expenditure of workmanship and reverence for what Ruskin called "truth" to materials. "Ashboughs," a cheerful, subtly Marian curtal sonnet, shows Hopkins's Ruskinian principles at work late in his life, especially in the poet's attention to diction, syntax, and divine truth revealed in concrete, worldly beauty.