Peace

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1879

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context

Hopkins wrote “Peace” on October 2, 1879, as he was preparing to leave his role as a curate in Oxford for Bedford Leigh, a town known for its uncleanliness. He expressed anxiety (a lack of peace) in anticipation of this move. Not only was Hopkins apprehensive about this next step in his theological journey and moving to a new city, but Great Britain was also roiling with turmoil as well. When the poem was written in 1879, an expanding Great Britain was at war on three different fronts: in Africa, in Afghanistan, and in Ireland The Anglo-Zulu War was initiated when the Zulu kingdom resisted Britain’s attempts to create a South African federation, among other contentious points including diamond mining. The Second Anglo-Afghan War (out of the three total confrontations) ran from 1878 through 1880, as Britain attempted to nullify Russian influence in the country and tried to exert its own control over the nation. In Ireland, the Irish Land War led to unrest that lasted from 1879 through 1882. The Land War was one Irish history’s largest and most brutal conflicts, and was the first time that landlord authority to control land was challenged. With so much personal and socio-political upheaval, Hopkins’s desire for peace for himself, his country, and the world reflects the time in which he wrote.

Literary Context

Writing in the Victorian period, Hopkins was a literary innovator. As previously stated, Hopkins invented the meter known as “sprung rhythm,” where the “rhythm ‘springs’ from stress to stress, emphasizing the stresses and permitting any number of slacks” ("A Brief Biography." Gerard Manley Hopkins Official Website, 2018). Part of his literary experimentation included inventing new words, such as “inscape,” “sillon,” “lovescape,” “outscape,” “stressy” and “twindle.” Hopkins’s experimentation extended to entire poetic forms as well, including creating his own sonnet: The “curtal sonnet,” or the “contracted sonnet.” This particular form of poem consists of 10.5 lines, with the first stanza containing 6 lines, and the second stanza containing 4.5 lines. The rhyme scheme of the curtal sonnet could be either abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcbc. Lastly, Hopkins’s contributions to the literary realm included the implementation of cynghanedd, a Welsh literary technique featuring internal consonant-rhyme. While Hopkins was a Victorian poet, his experimentation and innovation paint him more as a Modernist with his poetic vision.