Description
Book Synopsis‘Touching God: Hopkins and Love’ is the first book devoted to love in the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, illuminating our understanding of him as a romantic poet. Discussions of desire in Hopkins’ poetry have focused on his unrequited attraction to men. In contrast, Duc Dau turns to Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of mutual touch to uncover the desire Hopkins cultivated and celebrated: his love for Christ. ‘Touching God’ demonstrates how descriptions of touching played a vital role in the poet’s vision of spiritual eroticism. Forging a new way of reading desire and the body in Hopkins’ writings, the work offers fresh interpretations of his poetry.
Trade Review‘Duc Dau has written an exciting and provocative book, […] a worthy and timely addition to the world of Hopkins scholarship, bringing a fresh, innovative, and at times deliberately challenging approach to the too-often-overlooked area of love in the writing of Hopkins. […] Far from denying the corporeal, this approach rightly draws attention to a frequently overlooked rich spiritual eroticism found nestling at the very heart of so much of Hopkins’s writing.’ — Hannah Dunleavy, ‘Hopkins Quarterly’
‘[A] fresh and frankly written study of the treatment of love in Hopkins’s poetry. One thing that makes Dau’s book exceptional is […] the candour with which she joins aspects of Hopkins scholarship so often at odds with (or at least unobservant of) each other: here, interest in the theological and interest in the erotic.’ —Summer J. Star ‘The Year’s Work in English Studies’
‘[O]f great interest and real value to Hopkins scholars and to those interested in Hopkins as a man and a thinker. […] And the book is throughout engrossing to read.’ —Erik Gray, ‘Victorian Studies’
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction: Love and Touch; Chapter One: Confluence and Reflection; Chapter Two: Virgin Marriage and the Song of Songs; Chapter Three: Conception, Pregnancy, Birth; Chapter Four: Caressing, Conversing, Kissing; Chapter Five: Homecoming; Notes; Bibliography; Index
