Hopkins Re-Constructed

"Hopkins Re-Constructed immediately takes its place as the definitive, critical, and literary-religious study of the great devotional poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Justus George Lawler, our authority upon transcendental forms and structures in poetry, has a deep lyrical and spiritual affinity with Hopkins. The final chapter, a dialectical synthesis of the great poet-priest's life and work, sets a new standard in the study of Hopkins." - Harold Bloom
"Lawler provdes new ways of looking at these seemingly familiar poems. The analysis of the sonnets is remarkable. Lawler's own view is full of surprises and fresh connections." - James Finn Cotter, President, The International Hopkins Association
"A learned and feisty book that will stimulate and engage Hopkins lovers and Hopkins scholars." - Joseph J. Feeney, S.J., editor, Hopkins Quarterly
"This book is a lively, learned, witty, contentious defense of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry against scholars, critics, and biographers who have over-complicated or misread it...Hopkins-Reconstructed is an excellent advanced introduction not only to Hopkins but also to the tradition within which he is to be understood and enjoyed." - J. Hillis Miller
"What will interest readers are Lawler's efforts to construct a unified field theory between Christian theology and physical science. Lawler is on the right track." --David Anthony Downes, Theology Today, April 2002
"The hallmarks of Lawler's criticism are its remarkable erudition both in the Roman Catholic tradition and in what one might term the 'intertextual prosodic practice' of the major Western poets; in each he exceeds most working interpreters of poetry, and in their combination he is unique....this is Lawler at the top of his analytic game." -The Journal of Religion