"Strokes of havoc": Tree-Felling and the Poetic Tradition of Ecocriticism in Manley Hopkins and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Considering that the full extent of Manley Hopkins’s influence on his son Gerard is still to be assessed, Mariaconcetta Costantini conducts a comparative analysis of a recently discovered poem by Manley, “The Old Trees”, and Gerard’s well-known “Binsey Poplars”, which was most likely inspired by his father’s text. The article not only sheds light onto the artistic model Manley offered to Gerard; it also gives an insight into the roles that father and son came to play within the tradition of nature or locodescriptive poetry, which underwent a significant transformation during the nineteenth century. While exploring the Hopkinses’ genealogical ‘dialogue’ with earlier and contemporary poets, Costantini reveals some peculiarities of their discourse on the spoliation of nature. More conservative than his son, Manley makes an allegorical use of tree-felling to express a nostalgia for the past that weakens his ecocriticism. Quite different are the effects of Gerard’s linguistic inventiveness in “Binsey Poplars”, whose tropes of tree-growth and -felling convey forceful images of ecological and ontological loss.