The "Sonnets from the Portuguese" as literary autobiography: A reading of Sonnet 1.
Item
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Title
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The "Sonnets from the Portuguese" as literary autobiography: A reading of Sonnet 1.
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Identifier
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AAI9224805
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identifier
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9224805
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Creator
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DeLuise, Dolores.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michael Timko
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Biography
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Abstract
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The speaker of Sonnet 1 tells a strange, almost incomprehensible story of self-displacement, shocked recognition, and personal unhappiness--the biography of EBB's literary relationship with Hugh Stuart Boyd. The speaker of Sonnet 43, on the other hand, tells of a satisfactory, gloriously self-liberating relationship--the biography of EBB's literary relationship with Robert Browning. In the intervening sonnets, the speaker comes to terms with issues of dominance and submission, unhappiness and joy, dependence and autonomy--the entire literary biography of EBB, which unfolds through a reading of Sonnet 1.;EBB's complex relationship with her mentor Boyd, recounted in her diary (1831-32), cast her as a failed translator, not an artist. She longed for "an equality" with him, but could not even achieve "a reciprocity." In Sonnet 1, Theocritus represents her attachment to Greek language and literature, nostalgia for her study of them, and Boyd himself. In that sonnet, she displaces Theocritus as muse, demonstrating a displacement of Boyd and his influence on her literary life. Sonnet 1 brings up Theocritus's genre, pastoral; in her own pastoral poems (1838-44), EBB dedicates a portion of Theocritus's masculine genre to a unique feminine enterprise: the creation of a feminine literary space where she is free not to create Beauty or to create as Beauty, the subject of the Romantic quest. As a turn occurs at the volta of the sonnet, so does a turn occur in EBB's literary life; her male poet/protagonists give way to a feminized, then feminine, poet/protagonist. The speaker becomes aware of a new and positive influence on her life, just as EBB becomes awakened to the personal and poetic possibilities which might be brought about by "a reciprocity" with the poet Browning.;The act of writing the Sonnets asserts the writing of EBB's own creativity, her autonomy as a poet, and her autonomy as a human being. The Sonnets successfully complete the discourse begun in the Diary, and involve a process of poetic self-scrutiny which permits her to conceive of and write Aurora Leigh. In 1845-46, she writes as both subject and object, Beauty and prince, the basis of poetic unity in the Sonnets.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
