Looking Outward at the Audience in Aurora Leigh

Audience is dangerous in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh (1856). As Aurora puts it, this danger lies in the theater's dependence on "the public taste" (5.270): like a performing dog, the dramatist might be rewarded by applause, but he might just as easily be "hissed at, howled at, stamped at" by the audience (5.277). Rather than risk such violent public judgment, Aurora declares, "I will write no plays" (5.267). Yet the insistent presence of Aurora Leigh's crowd scenes makes it possible to understand the poem as a theatrical space, and focuses our attention on the poem's real and imagined audiences. This paper considers the ways in which Aurora Leigh looks outward to acknowledge the crowds of audiences (and actors) that Aurora's poetics often seem to exclude, registering the poem's uneasy stance toward the existence of poetic traditions in which choral, public performance is as important as written language.

Loại tài liệu:

Article - Bài báo

Tác giả:

Madden, Caolan

Đề mục:

English literature

Nhà xuất bản:

Indiana University Press

Ngày xuất bản:

Winter 2019

Số trang/ tờ:

Định dạng:

pdf

Định danh tư liệu:

https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.61.2.02

Nguồn gốc:

Victorian studies, Volume 61, Number 2, Winter 2019, Pages 186-193

Liên kết:

ISSN 0042-5222

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Looking Outward at the Audience in Aurora Leigh

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