Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetics of passion

Author

Margaret M. Morlier

Date of Award

12-1986

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Nancy Goslee

Committee Members

Mary Richards, Richard Kelly, Martha Lee Osborne

Abstract

In overemphasizing the theme of self-assertion, modern feminist criticism tends to misunderstand the moral vision in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In this study I examine the metaphysical assumptions of her poetics and conclude that her moral vision is based on the cognition of empathy, which she treats as a human reflection of divine passion. In

Chapter I, "The Death of Pan," I show that Barrett Browning rejects Pan as an image of the poet because Pan represents the masculinist bias of both the poetic tradition and its objectifying epistemology. In Chpater II, "A Daughter of Eve," I analyze the poet's revision of the Genesis story through the temptation scenes in her poems. Eve and her daughters fall when they accept the position of object in a world created by Adam and his sons; Eve's daughters can be redeemed by realizing the divinity within themselves that allows them to become subjective creators of the world in which they live. The subjective authority comes from empathic knowledge of the spiritual equality of all individuals—an equality that is celebrated in the Sonnets from the Portuguese. I contend further in Chapter III, "Oracles of Life," that Barrett Browning developed in Casa Guidi Windows a prophetic voice that incorporates the voices of others with the voice of the self. And in Chapter IV, I show that because she was not comfortable with the hierarchical epistemological assumptions of matriarchy, she rejected the analogy of mother and poet. Finally, in Chapter V, I argue that Aurora Leigh includes the poet's critique of both the patriarchal bias of socialism and the matriarchal bias of feminism. Aurora—and by extension the woman poet—must grow beyond the hierarchical assumptions of social ideologies; she must assume an epistemology and ontology based on empathic apprehension so that she is neither an object nor an objectifier.

In the final analysis, the function of the artist is to reform society by reminding its members of the artificiality of its ideologies and even of its linguistic tools as compared to the reality of human life.

Recommended Citation

Morlier, Margaret M., "Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetics of passion. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1986.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/12299