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영어

This essay explores the shift of natural concept in G. M. Hopkins’ poetic development. His early poems show a distinctively different idea of nature from his later ones, and I argue that his poetry at large departs from the classical and romantic tradition and heads toward the modern ecological conception of nature. Nature, as shown in “An Alchemist in the City” and “The Heaven Haven,” typically serves as a backdrop or ornament for an abstract idea or feeling, so it does not foreground itself as an essential part of the poem. However, this concept of nature undergoes a radical change in Hopkins’ later poetic career. Now his poetry begins to reflect the scientific observation of nature and attempt to capture its detailed biological or ecological aspects from a realistic perspective. In such poems as “The Windhover” and “Harry Plowman” Hopkins not only depicts an object from a realistic viewpoint, but also takes an ecological attitude in doing so. This in turn leads him to think of every creation as having its own unique self, or reality, which distinguishes itself from all the others. All natural things are thus viewed as having an equal existential right. But human egoism, or an anthropocentric world-view, has led to exploit and wreak havoc on nature. Hopkins puts that nature is a unique divine source which humanity has for restoration of its spiritual integrity.