Saturday, February 27, 2010

Poems: Browning, Rossetti, and Dickinson


Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets
  • Juxtaposition of love and pain
  • Receive love based on self-worth
  • Romantic love, outward expression, love can be clumsy
  • Death, love, and the liminal space between them


Christina Rossetti: Who Shall Deliver Me?
  • Who is this "someone"? Is it God, herself, or a man?
  • Grace can take away our pain; very religious undertones
  • Lots of self loathing and anger
  • Similar themes as found in Paul's letter to the Romans


Emily Dickinson: "For each ecstatic instant" and "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant"
  • Self-worth
  • In "Ecstatic" Dickinson alleges that happiness is bittersweet; you can't know happiness without some pain, which is what Austen alleges in Persuasion
  • Little structure
  • Truth is ambiguous and can be many things

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