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Article: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Italian independence, and the "Critical Reaction" of Henry James.
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Few writers as prominent in their own lifetimes fell afterwards into neglect more completely, or have had to wait longer for renewed intelligent attention, than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A critical climate more and more impatient with inherited social and sexual antinomies has proved unusually favorable to a poet whose work appears to exemplify the fusion of private with public concerns. As one might have guessed, the ongoing restoration of Barrett Browning has focused much of its energies on the political content of her verse, explaining her devotion to the Italian Risorgimento as an enactment, in part, of her own struggle for psychological and artistic wholeness and ...