Inscape
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Disambiguation: for inscape in visual art (in the works of Roberto Matta, for example), see Inscape (visual art). For the investment company see Inscape Investments Limited.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, the British Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, derived the concept of inscape from the mediaeval philosopher, Duns Scotus. The term itself means the unique, distinctive and inherent quality of a thing. Hopkins believed that everything in the world was characterized by inscape and in turn inscape was what designed an individual's dynamic, never static, identity. Because humans are the most highly selved in the world, we can recognize the inscape in other beings of the world through a process called instress, says Hopkins; and to recognize a being's inscape through instress requires a divine intervention. Inscape and instress play a major part in organizing the structure of Hopkins's poetry.
Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age Page 1649
