The Sun Sets in East: Appropriation of Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Sun Sets in the East examines the ministry and teaching of Gerard Manley Hopkins to demonstrate that Hopkins had more of an impact on the language of ascent than was previously realized and that his effect on education is latent and unexplored. Through the handing on of his poetry and correspondences to close friends, Hopkins reaches out from his life of poetic isolation and into the experience of the twenty-first-century reader. His poetry serves as a series of spiritual movements to direct the reader down a path to the mystical, a road to union with nature's enduring and broken reality, in the vein of The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. In this book, Hopkins is repositioned to be a voice for the field of education, giving way to an undiscovered pathway in Hopkins scholarship. The unpaved road involves developing a philosophy of education from the pedagogical witness, writings, and work of Hopkins and a gateway to a new company of poets. In the final chapter, practical implications are offered for the designers of future schooling and curriculums, yet the enduring call is to the curation and proliferation of sacramental poets. Special attention is given to the linkage between philosopher Charles Taylor, Hopkins, and future directions in education.