Paradox as a struggle with Language in Geoffrey Hill’s Poetry: with Special Reference to Scenes from Comus (2005)

      Geoffrey Hill (b.1932) is paradoxically hailed by most critics as a controversially fine poet who is challenging, yet rewarding. This has to do with his conception of language, rather than the nature of his thought. An erudition wedded to periphrasis, polyphony, and Pyrotechnics shapes Hill’s artistic personality and accounts for the involvement of his style in general. So, he appeals almost exclusively to the academic reader. Modernist as it is certain of him, he always struggles to command a mastery of the written word and to have a stylistic and syntactic perfection. This quest for a fulfilled and fulfilling language is achieved in the verbal complexity of paradox. He has managed through it to solve the problem of the way to grapple with the ever metamorphosing, nature of truth and to fulfill a higher degree of non-commitment; that is, to escape involving in the use of linear language. Hill’s achievement in Scenes from Comus (2005) is closely associated with his experimentation with the form of paradox as part of his struggle with language. The book, as a turning point in the poet’s mood and attitude towards man and existence, reveals his ability to employ the versatile medium of paradox for diverse moods and different orientations from those of his early poetry. The objective of the current study, accordingly, is to examine Hill’s perceptions of the elusive nature of language and the writer’s moral responsibility to find a linguistic mode that renders an escape from moral non-commitment attainable. It aims, likewise, to study Hill’s employment of paradox throughout Scenes from Comus with its distinctly optimistic mood and positive attitude.