Ong, Hopkins, and the evolution of consciousness

Although Father Walter J. Ong is most widely known for his orality–literacy scholarship, we do well to bear in mind that his most advanced formal training was in literary studies. From early on in these studies, the figure he wrote about and continued to write about throughout his life was the poet, and fellow Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ong was drawn to Hopkins in large part for the bearing of his writing on the evolution of human consciousness. Ong discovered in his Master’s thesis on Hopkins’ sprung rhythm – written under Marshall McLuhan – that Hopkins was in some sense hearing in advance the sounds of what would become twentieth-century modernism. Hopkins displayed a sensibility and awareness that were compelling for the modernist writers of the twentieth century, as they carried out their experiments with finding new voices, new ways of writing poetry for the changed world in which they found themselves. Hopkins’ feel for the distinctive self, seeking connection with other selves in the uncertainties of time, played no small role in this appeal. Ong’s work on Hopkins is a model for both literary criticism and studies in the evolution of consciousness.