The Sun Sets in the East

The Appropriation of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Timothy J. Wesley

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798385268740
  9798385268757
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385268764
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Sun Sets in the East examines the ministry and teaching of Gerard Manley Hopkins to demonstrate that Hopkins had more of an impact on the language of ascent than was previously realized and that his effect on education is latent and unexplored. Through the handing on of his poetry and correspondences to close friends, Hopkins reaches out from his life of poetic isolation and into the experience of the twenty-first-century reader. His poetry serves as a series of spiritual movements to direct the reader down a path to the mystical, a road to union with nature's enduring and broken reality, in the vein of The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. In this book, Hopkins is repositioned to be a voice for the field of education, giving way to an undiscovered pathway in Hopkins scholarship. The unpaved road involves developing a philosophy of education from the pedagogical witness, writings, and work of Hopkins and a gateway to a new company of poets. In the final chapter, practical implications are offered for the designers of future schooling and curriculums, yet the enduring call is to the curation and proliferation of sacramental poets. Special attention is given to the linkage between philosopher Charles Taylor, Hopkins, and future directions in education.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword —Dr. Francis L. Fennell
• Introduction
• Timeline of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Life
• Chapter One: Introducing Hopkins as Master Educator and Architect
• Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
• Chapter Three: Setting the Groundwork for Interpreting Hopkins—Postmodernity, Semiotic Phenomenology, and the Reader
• Chapter Four: Subject-Object Relationality—Mapping Out Ascent in the Writings of Hopkins
• Chapter Five: Hopkins as Ecocentric, Incarnational Theology—the Boundaries and Entrapments of Single Interpretations
• Chapter Six: Letter Writing as a Form of Teaching and Witness—the Democratic Jump in Hopkins Criticism
• Chapter Seven: Implications for the Philosophy of Education—Hopkins as Poet and Teacher, a Living Witness
• References
• About the Author