Victorian Poetry 19: Swinburne and Hopkins

We discuss "The Garden of Proserpine" and the ways that it anticipates or instantiates Freud's idea of the death drive: all the repetitions in the poem. Then we turn to the poet most opposite in attitude: Hopkins, and talk briefly of "Pied Beauty" and "That Nature is a Heralcitean Fire." Discussion in Instress and the Duns-Scotian term haecicity that makes it possible, as opposed to Thomas Aquainas' universality. We'll finish considering Hopkins next class.