Proto-modernist innovations in Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetic form: Sprung rhythm and the anticipation of modernist aesthetics

Modernism is an early 20th century literary movement that greatly highlights the meaninglessness, desperate situation of the world, and the alienated individuals from themselves and communities. The fundamental reasons why modernism focuses on these issues are mainly about the industrialization, technological advances and thus the pollution of environment. Crucial modernist writers like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound succeed in touching upon those entire problems "modern" individuals encounter. Having evinced the real troubles of individuals, modernists also challenge the traditional patterns. Similarly, Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet and priest, is a representative of the literary movement to some extent. Though he is not regarded as a modernist poet due to his life experienced between 1844 and 1889, Hopkins' poetry can be interpreted through the lens of the literary movement thanks to his innovative productions, use of language, and criticism of the industrial pollution and humankind's aimless pursue of a straight line resulting in nowhere. Accordingly, although the poet has numerous poems, we investigate Hopkins' modernist sides within three selected poems  "God's Grandeur," "Pied Beauty," and "Spring and Fall"  since one can find some modernist implications in these poems such as sprung rhythm, fragmentation, and the relationship between nature and human beings. In this context, this study, by providing examples from those mentioned poems, aims to analyze Hopkins' poetry in the light of modernism and to picture the poet's modernist posture.