홉킨스의 사제 역할과 동성애적 욕망

Hopkins’ Priest Roles and Homosexual Desires

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between Hopkins’ priest roles and homosexual desires. Hopkins as a parish priest takes charge of priest’ fundamental duties such as the Communion. His desire for another male body is expressed through the sacrament, which grants him the privilege of a sacred union with another male, as in “The Bugler’s First Communion.” However, his eventual employment as a professor in Ireland takes him away from a setting wherein he can express and realize these desires in a sacred way. Therefore, it becomes impossible for him to couple with another male in an acceptable, divine fashion. Absent from this possibility, he is reduced to erotically watching the bodies of other males, as in “Harry Ploughman,” which makes him feel isolated and causes him to view himself as an “eunuch.” These two poems are the evidence of the sublimation of his homosexual desires into the religion and also of his terrible anguish in Ireland as a result of his alienation from the fundamental duties of the priesthood.