Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856)
Corinna Russell on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s book-length poem Aurora Leigh
In Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning does not just attempt to reframe the old question, whether the calling of a woman to a life of art is compatible with loving intimacy: she uses her nine-book epic to work out the idea that it is precisely by combining the poet-philosopher’s capacity for self-knowledge and a loving engagement with ‘Humanity’ that a woman can best take up her place in the public sphere. Love as a force of political reform is radically articulated by the narrative as well as the verse of Aurora Leigh: readers might recognize its debts to the marriage plot of Jane Eyre.
The account of the poet Aurora Leigh, orphaned child of an Italian mother and an English father, becomes a struggle to write her own story and to live with authenticity and compassion. The antagonism and passion between her and the economist and social reformer Romney Leigh, becomes a testing ground for key arguments of the age: the separation of male and female spheres, the relative claims of convention and liberty, social duty, personal fulfilment and sexual love, and the powers of prose and poetry are all contested in this extraordinary work.
This is a symphonic, rewarding slow read; unlike anything else you will encounter, and the lecture will serve as guide to the hybrid forces at work in the poetry of ‘EBB’. ‘My chief intention just now,’ wrote Elizabeth Barrett to her fellow poet, Robert Browning in 1845, ‘is the writing of a sort of novel-poem … running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like, “where angels fear to tread” & so, meeting face to face & without mask, the Humanity of the age and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly’. The following year, in defiance of her domineering father, she eloped to the continent with Browning and continued work on her novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, throughout the next decade.
Barrett Browning had already made her name as a poet urgently engaged with current affairs, speaking out through her verse on the exploitation of child labour and enslaved people. Her newfound domestic happiness in Italy coincided with the revolutionary drive towards self-determination by the people of that nation, and with currents of socialist and reforming ideas sweeping through Europe, all keenly observed and reflected in her poetry.
Live online lecture and seminar with Corinna Russell, Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
EBB Archive page on Aurora Leigh:
’The novel-epic Aurora Leigh is the most extended work written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), the most internationally influential English woman poet of the nineteenth century. One of the first full-length portraits of the woman writer in English literature, Aurora Leigh is a generically complex work, mixing the conventions of the novel with those of the epic. It engaged with many of the key controversies of the mid-nineteenth century, including the “social question” arising from class conflicts, the “woman question” engendered by the push for women’s rights, and debates over aesthetic form as well as appropriate subjects for poetry. ‘
See also Poetry Foundation for information about Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Saturday 22 March2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Fees
£32.00 Full price
£27.00 Students
£27.00 CAMcard holders
Live online via Zoom.
The lecture is recorded and made available to participants to listen again for 48 hours after the live lecture. The seminar is not recorded.
Corinna Russell on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s book-length poem Aurora Leigh
In Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning does not just attempt to reframe the old question, whether the calling of a woman to a life of art is compatible with loving intimacy: she uses her nine-book epic to work out the idea that it is precisely by combining the poet-philosopher’s capacity for self-knowledge and a loving engagement with ‘Humanity’ that a woman can best take up her place in the public sphere. Love as a force of political reform is radically articulated by the narrative as well as the verse of Aurora Leigh: readers might recognize its debts to the marriage plot of Jane Eyre.
The account of the poet Aurora Leigh, orphaned child of an Italian mother and an English father, becomes a struggle to write her own story and to live with authenticity and compassion. The antagonism and passion between her and the economist and social reformer Romney Leigh, becomes a testing ground for key arguments of the age: the separation of male and female spheres, the relative claims of convention and liberty, social duty, personal fulfilment and sexual love, and the powers of prose and poetry are all contested in this extraordinary work.
This is a symphonic, rewarding slow read; unlike anything else you will encounter, and the lecture will serve as guide to the hybrid forces at work in the poetry of ‘EBB’. ‘My chief intention just now,’ wrote Elizabeth Barrett to her fellow poet, Robert Browning in 1845, ‘is the writing of a sort of novel-poem … running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like, “where angels fear to tread” & so, meeting face to face & without mask, the Humanity of the age and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly’. The following year, in defiance of her domineering father, she eloped to the continent with Browning and continued work on her novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, throughout the next decade.
Barrett Browning had already made her name as a poet urgently engaged with current affairs, speaking out through her verse on the exploitation of child labour and enslaved people. Her newfound domestic happiness in Italy coincided with the revolutionary drive towards self-determination by the people of that nation, and with currents of socialist and reforming ideas sweeping through Europe, all keenly observed and reflected in her poetry.
Live online lecture and seminar with Corinna Russell, Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
EBB Archive page on Aurora Leigh:
’The novel-epic Aurora Leigh is the most extended work written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), the most internationally influential English woman poet of the nineteenth century. One of the first full-length portraits of the woman writer in English literature, Aurora Leigh is a generically complex work, mixing the conventions of the novel with those of the epic. It engaged with many of the key controversies of the mid-nineteenth century, including the “social question” arising from class conflicts, the “woman question” engendered by the push for women’s rights, and debates over aesthetic form as well as appropriate subjects for poetry. ‘
See also Poetry Foundation for information about Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Saturday 22 March2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Fees
£32.00 Full price
£27.00 Students
£27.00 CAMcard holders
Live online via Zoom.
The lecture is recorded and made available to participants to listen again for 48 hours after the live lecture. The seminar is not recorded.
Corinna Russell on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s book-length poem Aurora Leigh
In Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning does not just attempt to reframe the old question, whether the calling of a woman to a life of art is compatible with loving intimacy: she uses her nine-book epic to work out the idea that it is precisely by combining the poet-philosopher’s capacity for self-knowledge and a loving engagement with ‘Humanity’ that a woman can best take up her place in the public sphere. Love as a force of political reform is radically articulated by the narrative as well as the verse of Aurora Leigh: readers might recognize its debts to the marriage plot of Jane Eyre.
The account of the poet Aurora Leigh, orphaned child of an Italian mother and an English father, becomes a struggle to write her own story and to live with authenticity and compassion. The antagonism and passion between her and the economist and social reformer Romney Leigh, becomes a testing ground for key arguments of the age: the separation of male and female spheres, the relative claims of convention and liberty, social duty, personal fulfilment and sexual love, and the powers of prose and poetry are all contested in this extraordinary work.
This is a symphonic, rewarding slow read; unlike anything else you will encounter, and the lecture will serve as guide to the hybrid forces at work in the poetry of ‘EBB’. ‘My chief intention just now,’ wrote Elizabeth Barrett to her fellow poet, Robert Browning in 1845, ‘is the writing of a sort of novel-poem … running into the midst of our conventions, & rushing into drawing-rooms & the like, “where angels fear to tread” & so, meeting face to face & without mask, the Humanity of the age and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly’. The following year, in defiance of her domineering father, she eloped to the continent with Browning and continued work on her novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, throughout the next decade.
Barrett Browning had already made her name as a poet urgently engaged with current affairs, speaking out through her verse on the exploitation of child labour and enslaved people. Her newfound domestic happiness in Italy coincided with the revolutionary drive towards self-determination by the people of that nation, and with currents of socialist and reforming ideas sweeping through Europe, all keenly observed and reflected in her poetry.
Live online lecture and seminar with Corinna Russell, Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
EBB Archive page on Aurora Leigh:
’The novel-epic Aurora Leigh is the most extended work written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), the most internationally influential English woman poet of the nineteenth century. One of the first full-length portraits of the woman writer in English literature, Aurora Leigh is a generically complex work, mixing the conventions of the novel with those of the epic. It engaged with many of the key controversies of the mid-nineteenth century, including the “social question” arising from class conflicts, the “woman question” engendered by the push for women’s rights, and debates over aesthetic form as well as appropriate subjects for poetry. ‘
See also Poetry Foundation for information about Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Saturday 22 March2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Fees
£32.00 Full price
£27.00 Students
£27.00 CAMcard holders
Live online via Zoom.
The lecture is recorded and made available to participants to listen again for 48 hours after the live lecture. The seminar is not recorded.