The Literature Network - Written in blood: the art of mothering epic in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.(essay)(Critical essay)

Written in blood: the art of mothering epic in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.(essay)(Critical essay)

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From: Victorian Poetry
Date: 20060622
Author:Taylor, Olivia Gatti

At age thirteen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning composed her first "epic" poem, "The Battle of Marathon," inspired by her hope to become the female Homer. (1) Later in her life, however, she rejected the limitations of an epic inspired by the past. In Barrett Browning's 1856 verse novel, Aurora Leigh, the protagonist--a woman poet, like the author herself--defines the true vocation of the creators of epic: they must "represent .../ Their age ... this live, throbbing age." (2) Aurora Leigh, an innovative kunstlerroman significantly longer than Milton's Paradise Lost, was indeed hailed ...

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