ABSTRACT
The importance of Tractarianism for Hopkins' poetry was recognized early. As literary executor, Robert Bridges selected High Church anthologies in which to iIltroduce Hopkins' poetry, despite Hopkins' membership of the Society of Jesus: Jud~ V. Nixon lists the early publications, and poirits out the affinities between Hopkins' work and Tractarianpoetry:
In the fifty years from 1918 when Bridges' own edition of Hopkins' poetry. appeared, the Tractadan component of the poetry was barely noted.2 Then a resurgence of interest occurred. Alison Sulloway in 1972 described Hopkins as arriving in Oxford already 'a devout Tractarian,' and began her historical study with a thorough but selective disqlssion of the progress of Tractarian thought in Oxford during what she called its 'third phase,' and related it to Hopkins in his undergraduate years.3 Nine years later, George B. Tennyson pointed out the paralleis between ~arly Tractarian theology and poeti,cs and Hopkins' works, and noted that 'his poetics, much as.they owe to non-Tractarian sourees, have affinities with the Tractarian linkage of poetry and prayer.'4 A decade after that, in 1991; Robert Martin argued that Hopkins' formative years were spentin the Church of England, and that an examination of those years was essential in coming to an understanding of the man:
These critics have done much to bring about an awareness of Hopkins' Tractarianism, and to bring it into balance with the Roman Catholicism of the second half of his life.
