Journal article
Let Me Count the Ways
Pedagogy : critical approaches to teaching literature, language, culture, and composition, Vol.16(2), pp.333-345
04/01/2016
DOI: 10.1215/15314200-3435980
Abstract
At 10,938 lines, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh would seem unsuited for the present-day classroom, with its focus on short, simple texts adapted for readers with little experience of long poems. Yet it teaches quite readily and, indeed, is often a student favorite. This article emphasizes the multigeneric quality of Browning's epic and the advantages of presenting its successive layers. The poem functions as a veiled autobiographical narrative of development, a fast-paced novel plot centering on gender and class relationships, and a closet drama utilizing features of the contemporary stage. Other aspects of the poem include its appeal as a travel narrative, as Aurora responds to European sites still unfamiliar to many of Browning's readers, and its self-reflexivity as a critical treatise on poetics, as Aurora attempts to enunciate the principles that have guided the poem's author. Certain aspects of the poem's imagery and characterization are especially effective in prompting classroom debate; among these are the ideologically laden symbols of a burned aristocratic manor, a blinded hero, the final vision of a New Jerusalem, and the remarkable portrayal of the aggrieved seamstress Marian, who protests her victimization by rape and rejects marriage with an upper-class suitor.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Let Me Count the Ways
- Creators
- Florence S. Boos
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Pedagogy : critical approaches to teaching literature, language, culture, and composition, Vol.16(2), pp.333-345
- DOI
- 10.1215/15314200-3435980
- ISSN
- 1531-4200
- eISSN
- 1533-6255
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/01/2016
- Academic Unit
- International Programs; English
- Record Identifier
- 9984398828602771
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