The Frugal Chariot: Readers, Reading, and the Case of Hopkins
Ebook
If you love poetry, this book is about you and for you. It doesn't matter whether you are a scholar or a lover of beautiful poetry, this book brings everyone together by responding to a current crisis: the falling interest in and support for the humanities, especially poetry. This book argues that the most fruitful place to begin to reinvigorate literary reading, and thus the humanities, is with the close and careful attention to the experience of non-academic readers. This book explores their experiences, listening carefully to what they have to say, how they--you!--respond to poetry, why you love it. The book shows, in other words, at least a partial cure for that falling interest in the humanities which gets so much attention in newspapers and on TV. The book employs the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and lets him supply the illustrative material. Hopkins is one of the seven most-read poets in the English language, but you do not have to know Hopkins well to understand the revolutionary approach to poetry and literary study that this book offers.
“The Frugal Chariot is a bold, brave, and bracing book that explores regions of readership far beyond the ivory tower. Its careful and thoughtful explorations bring together a wide array of responses to Hopkins’s poetry, ranging from common readers to inspired artists and everything in between. Francis Fennell has opened new paths for literary studies which are pragmatic, democratic, and powerful. A welcome, timely book that should be read widely within academia—and far beyond.”
—Stephen Tardif, assistant professor of Christianity and culture, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto
“The Frugal Chariot is the record of Francis Fennell’s exciting quest to understand how non-academic readers have read, understood, and thrived on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry as they created a community of sympathetic and perceptive readers, composers, and artists. Fennell’s goal to give ‘voice to the voiceless’ reveals his respect for ordinary and non-professional readers. Fennell has created a new and multifaceted approach to Hopkins of very great value.”
—Tom Zaniello, professor emeritus of English, Northern Kentucky University
“In this well-constructed analysis of Gerald Manley Hopkins’s poetry, the complexity of the poet’s language is beautifully conveyed to us as sustenance to feed the mind, a celestial mystery to satisfy the soul, and a love of wondrous ambiguity that causes the heart to yearn for more.”
—Terry Boyle, author of This Will Be
“The fruit of decades of careful study, this wise and timely book amplifies the voices of composers, painters, and sculptors (and even one executive chef!) for whom Hopkins’s poetry remains a deeply personal matter. The result is more than a collection of new insights about a beloved poet; it is a paradigm-shifting post-critical reading. This is a seasoned scholar’s bold challenge to his discipline, and it will be a balm to anyone who loves poetry and has lamented the life-sapping ways it is so often taught and studied.”
—Brett Beasley, writer and term assistant teaching professor, University of Notre Dame
- Title: The Frugal Chariot: Readers, Reading, and the Case of Hopkins
- Author: Francis L. Fennell
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666785401, 9781666785395, 1666785393, 9781666785388, 1666785385, 1666785407
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666785401
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-01-04T01:35:59Z
Francis L. Fennell is professor emeritus of English at Loyola University Chicago and the author of numerous books and articles on a wide variety of topics, but especially Victorian poetry. His most recent research has been on the world-wide interest of ordinary readers in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, an interest that expresses itself in a myriad of hitherto-unexamined ways.