A Madrigal Start is an experiment in using a BrowseSpace environment for the organization and presentation of critical material on Gerard Manley Hopkins. The document itself consists of four substantial essays about the poet:

• "But Who Looks East at Sunset?" Hopkins and Scientific Perception
• "And Fain Would Follow:" Hopkins in the School of (Christina) Rossetti
• "Lines for a Picture:" Ekphrasis and the Emparadised Woman in Dante, D. G. Rossetti, and Hopkins
• "Melt Him But Master Him Still:" Hopkins' Poetics of Form and Place in "The Wreck of the Deutschland"

The essays have been broken into seventy-four individual nodes of text, each of which deals more or less coherently with a set of themes. BrowseSpace allows these nodes to be navigated in a number of ways:

• You may choose to read them in the straight-forward manner in which they were written, by following the links labeled "Next" at the bottom of each page. In this way, it is possible to re-assemble the nodes into four linear essays.
• Once inside one of the essays, you may elect to encounter a node out of sequence, or to move to a node associated with one of the other three works. This enables you to construct your own text from the available fragments by exploring those ideas which most interest you. Each node will offer a set of such options at the bottom of its page.
• You may also choose to enter one of several thematic BrowseSpaces, which allow you to move from a central index outward to nodes dealing with the following topics:
  1. Language, Metaphor-Making, and "Wording It Right"
  2. Color, Painting, Pre-Raphaelitism, and Ruskin
  3. Observation and Perception
  4. Influence
  5. Complexity, Nature, Beauty, and Aesthetics
  6. Violence and Freedom, Placement and Cloistering, Peace and the Divine
  7. Critics and Criticism
  8. Beatrice

Your options aren't limited to a single navigation scheme. From any individual node, you may choose to read linearly (either forward or, if needed to counter disorientation and supply context, backward), or you may begin a non-linear exploration. In addition, from each node you have access to the "Start" page of A Madrigal Start, which allows you to enter thematic BrowseSpaces or to begin with the first page of one of the other essays.

Each node has been color-coded and features an icon which is meant to help you identify the essay to which it belongs. These icons are displayed on the "Start" page and will be shown at the top of every node.

A search engine, also available from the "Start" page, allows you to sift through all seventy-four nodes for words and phrases of interest to you, but which may not have been coded into one of the BrowseSpace navigation options.

Additional online resources are accessible from the "Start" page, including an invaluable Hopkins concordance and the 1918 edition of his Poems.