The Exemplary Prose of Geoffrey Hill

Abstract

This chapter shows how ideas of exemplarity provide a key to understanding some of the ongoing critical questions surrounding Hill’s prose. The lack of linearity of Hill’s prose has prompted considerable critical attention and scepticism. I propose that treating exemplarity as a structuring principle of his prose style—as well as the focus for some of its content—provides a way into some of these interpretative difficulties. The chapter offers a close analysis of ‘Civil Polity and the Confessing State’ and other essays in order to show how the associative structure of Hill’s writing proceeds through the presentation of exemplary instances. An analysis of reviews in Style and Faith shows how adherence (or lack thereof) to the example set by earlier writers emerges as one of Hill’s key critical desiderata: a guiding principle in his assessment of other writers.