Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

[Auszug: Buch I]

845		My books! At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets. As the earth
850		Plunges in fury, when the internal fires Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat The marts and temples, the triumphal gates And towers of observation, clears herself To elemental freedom–thus, my soul,
855		At poetry's divine first finger-touch, Let go conventions and sprang up surprised, Convicted of the great eternities Before two worlds. What's this, Aurora Leigh, You write so of the poets, and not laugh?
860		Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark, Exaggerators of the sun and moon, And soothsayers in a tea-cup? I write so Of the only truth-tellers, now left to God, – The only speakers of essential truth,
865		Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths; the only holders by His sun-skirts, through conventional grey glooms; The only teachers who instruct mankind, From just a shadow on a charnel-wall,
870		To find man's veritable stature out, [32] Erect, sublime, – the measure of a man, And that's the measure of an angel, says The apostle. Ay, and while your common men Build pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine,
875		And dust the flaunty carpets of the world For kings to walk on, or our senators, The poet suddenly will catch them up With his voice like a thunder. . 'This is soul, This is life, this word is being said in heaven,
880		Here's God down on us! what are you about?' How all those workers start amid their work, Look round, look up, and feel, a moment's space, That carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade, Is not the imperative labour after all.

Erstdruck und Druckvorlage

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Aurora Leigh.
London: Chapman and Hall 1857.

Unser Auszug: S. 31-32.

URL: https://archive.org/details/auroraleigh00browrich
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001426842

Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck (Editionsrichtlinien).

Kommentierte und kritische Ausgaben

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Aurora Leigh.
Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism.
Edited by Margaret Reynolds.
New York; London: Norton 1996.
Text (1859) u. Kommentar: S. 29-30.
The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
General Editor, Sandra Donaldson.
Vol. 3: Aurora Leigh. 4th edn (1859).
Volume Editor and Textual Introduction, Sandra Donaldson;
Critical Introduction, Marjorie Stone.
London: Pickering & Chatto 2010.

Literatur

Bevis, Matthew (Hrsg.): The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry. Oxford u.a. 2013.

Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetiken der Lyrik: Von der Normpoetik zur Autorenpoetik. In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte. Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 2-15.

Dawson, Clara: Victorian Poetry and the Culture of Evaluation. Oxford 2020.

Erbeznik, Elizabeth: City-Craft as Poetic Process in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. In: Victorian Poetry; 52 (2014), S. 619-636.

Hauser, Emily: "Homer Undone". Homeric Scholarship and the Invention of Female Epic. In: Reading Poetry, Writing Genre: English Poetry and Literary Criticism in Dialogue with Classical Scholarship. Hrsg. von Silvio Bär u.a. London 2019, S. 151-171.

Hughes, Linda K. (Hrsg.): The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry. Cambridge 2019.

Kerry, Paul E. u.a. (Hrsg.): Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence. Vancouver 2018.

Laird, Holly A.: Aurora Leigh: An Epical Ars Poetica. In: Writing the Woman Artist. Essays on Poetics, Politics, and Portraiture. Hrsg. von Suzanne W. Jones. Philadelphia 1991, S. 353-370.

Lyons, Sara: The Disenchantment/Re-Enchantment of the World: Aesthetics, Secularization, and the Gods of Greece from Friedrich Schiller to Walter Pater. In: Modern Language Review 109 (2014), S. 873-895.

Martus, Steffen u.a. (Hrsg.): Lyrik im 19. Jahrhundert. Gattungspoetik als Reflexionsmedium der Kultur. Bern u.a. 2005 (= Publikationen zur Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 11).

Noel-Tod, Jeremy: The Hero as Individual Talent. Thomas Carlyle, T. S. Eliot and the Prophecy of Modernism. In: The Review of English Studies 64 (2013), S. 475-491.

Selbmann, Rolf: Dichterberuf. Zum Selbstverständnis des Schriftstellers von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Darmstadt 1994.

Stone, Marjorie: The 'Advent of Aurora Leigh: Critical Myths and Periodical Debates.
URL: https://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=marjorie-stone-the-advent-of-aurora-leigh-critical-myths-and-periodical-debates
[gesehen: 12.12.2021]

Stone, Marjorie: Criticism on Aurora Leigh: An Overview.
URL: http://ebbarchive.org/criticism/Aurora_Leigh_Criticism_Overview.pdf
[gesehen: 12.12.2021]

Waithe, Marcus / White, Claire (Hrsg.): The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910. Authorial Work Ethics. London 2018.

Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer