Vision and music: Poetic theory and conflict in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Item
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Title
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Vision and music: Poetic theory and conflict in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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Identifier
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AAI9510696
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identifier
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9510696
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Creator
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Newton, Jean Mandelbaum.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michael Timko
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Date
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1994
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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
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Abstract
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Recent renewed interest in the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning has emphasized the manner in which she succeeded in finding her voice as a woman poet. However, one must ask, to what end did she struggle to develop that voice? What vision did she wish to communicate? Barrett Browning declared, in the dedication to Aurora Leigh, that the work contained her "highest convictions upon life and art." The development of those convictions--concerning the nature of art and its relationship to Victorian life--follows a course typical of the period, echoing the concerns of Tennyson, Browning and Arnold. A full understanding of Barrett Browning's poetry first requires an examination of her poetic theory. Like Thomas Carlyle, and partly under his influence, she developed a theory of poetry as revelation, emphasizing its social functions over the poet's need for personal expression. Yet, like her contemporaries Tennyson and Arnold, she displays in her early work a powerful sense of despair and loss, an almost suicidal melancholy and fascination with death. The inevitable conflict between her requirement that poetry be optimistic and uplifting and her inability to edit out her own negative emotions manifests itself in dramatic poems focusing upon a central artist figure who, together with multiple other characters, represents a fragmented poetic self searching for an escape from torment. Barrett Browning's spiritual journey from darkness to light, documented in Sonnets from the Portuguese and following the pattern of other conversion literature of the period, resolves that early conflict by reconciling her self-image with her artistic ideal. Her subsequent work reflects the emergence of a powerful and coherent voice, focusing upon contemporary themes and issues and representing the realization of her early artistic goals. By adopting a relativist stance on certain political and artistic issues, she has succeeded in making her work accessible to a modern audience. Comparison of parallel works by Barrett Browning and Tennyson, whose career followed a similar course of development, not only provides further justification for including her among the high Victorian poets, but highlights her far more successful resolution of a conflict shared by her contemporaries.
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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.
