James Joyce and Hopkins Links to Clongowes Wood College

Field Trips form an integral part of the Gerard Manley Hopkins Festival each year. We like our visitors to visit and relax in places associated with the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins and with the Jesuits such as Clongowes Wood College (where James Joyce recieved some of his education; Emo Court, novitiate for the Jesuits for many years; Glasnevin Cemetary where Hopkins is buried and other such places.

Departure, by bus, from Maynooth University at 13.15 hours and back in time for Sherry Reception and the Hopkins Society Banquet in Maynooth. The Tour will be guided by Pat Lonergan and Richard Austen will recite Hopkins's The Bugler at the College

Gerard Manley Hopkins visited Clongowes Wood College when he was in Ireland.The young James Joyce also started school in Clongowes Wood College when he was only six and a half years old, 'half-past six'

Hopkins in Clongowes Wood College

Gerard Manley Hopkins visited his Jesuit confreres in Clongowes Wood College when he was in Ireland.The young James Joyce also started school in Clongowes Wood College when he was only six and a half years old, 'half-past six' as he said himself. Richard Ellman describes the young, bespeckled Joyce as 'already a well-behaved, slim little boy in adult company, with a pale face and eyes of the palest blue to lend, when not laughing, an impenetrable coolness, an odd self-sufficiency, to otherwise regular and predictable features. Clongowes Wood College, a boys' school housed in a 15th-century castle and famous that "low dark narrow corridor" with grim looking past pupils (mostly serious judges) frowning down where the young Stephen Daedelous in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man made his weary way to see the Rector. Clongowes Wood College is now a private secondary boarding school for boys in County Kildare, Ireland run by the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits) since 1814, making it one of Ireland's oldest Catholic schools. Clongowes is still one of the foremost schools in Ireland and is set in an amazingly lush, tree-lined park in County Kildare. Well worth a visit! The chapel has several works by modern Irish artists: The Stations of the Cross are by Sean Keating and the stained glass windows by Evie Hone and Michael Healy. The college museum contains interesting antiquities. The Jesuit, Father Conmee was Rector of Clongowes Wood when Joyce started his life as a boarder in the isolated school.. Joyce remembered him later as 'a bland and courtly humanist.'Stephan Deadalus remembers how 'You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army.' ; and how ' You were awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose . . . . We hope you have a wonderful day at Clongowes Wood!

Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive - free resource

The Gerard Manley Hopkins Festival

Fieldtrip : James Joyce's Clongowes Wood College

Hopkins in Clongowes Wood College