A Queer Chivalry Queer Chivalry: The Homoerotic Asceticism Of Gerard Manley Hopkins The Homoerotic Asceticism Of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Book Summary

The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was a practitioner ofstrict asceticism in its broadest definition--the refusal of physical pleasure orcomfort in the interests of moral or spiritual gain. As a result, his commentatorshave felt obliged to take a stand approving or disapproving of this rigorousself-discipline: Many idealize his allegiance to the Society of Jesus as motivatedby his determination to conquer his attraction to other men, and thus as the sourceof the spiritual strength from which his eucharistic and Christological versederived. Others decry his monasticism as the regrettably oppressive regimen fromwhich he was able to escape only occasionally through his sensuous, sometimesovertly homoerotic verse. Julia F. Saville usesLacanian theories of sublimation and courtly love to reconfigure this long-standingrift in the field of Hopkins criticism. Her book displaces hagiographicinterpretations of the poet's life, arguing that Hopkins's poetics of homoeroticasceticism shaped his work in such a way that his career should be viewed not as asteady linear progression but as an ongoing process of negotiating his desire. Italso constitutes a map tracing the alternating practices of self-discipline andself-indulgence, self-expression and self-silencing performed by Hopkins'sverse. Saville presents a new reading ofasceticism that does not advocate or condemn its practice. What is needed, sheargues, is a reading that explains first the dialectical capacity of asceticism bothto constrain and to liberate, to cause discomfort and to give satisfaction, andsecond, the ethical value of recognizing and encouraging this dialecticaloperation. A Queer Chivalry highlights the strangeblending of sensual delight and strict self-denial in Hopkins's courtly verse, initiating a new trend in criticism that celebrates the poet's queer status as theVictorian troubadour-priest.

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