Help with Aurora Leigh

[tasnim]

I've just started reading Aurora Leigh as a core text in a women's writing course, which asks that the text be placed in context of the author's other work. Does anyone know which of EBB's other poems would be useful to compare to AL?

Thanks.

[Quark]

There are few different ways you could go with this idea. Aurora Leigh is long poem with many different themes. One you could focus on is Aurora Leigh's artistic ambition. She envisions a realism that's socially relevant. She wants to engage with important social issues, and doesn't want to stay within the small circumscribed area given to women. Many of E.B.B's poems have strong and overt social messages. "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" or "The Cry of Children" are two that come to mind. You could also answer this question by discussing E.B.B's feminist beliefs. E.B.B writes some other poems with women poets as the subject. She writes two about George Sand and another called "Mother and Poet". Finally, I think you could argue reasons why the relationship with Romney fails. This would give you an opening to include all of E.B.B's love poems (of which there are many). You could come up with an ideal form of love and contrast it with the love offered by Romney. The Sonnets from Portuguese would be the obvious choice for this, but there are many other that would be applicable.

All these ideas are based on comparing content--which is all I can remember of E.B.B. You might compare the form of the poetry as well.

I hope that is of some use.