Feeling Intellect in Aurora Leigh and The Prelude

Close readings of Aurora Leigh (1856) and The Prelude (1850) reveal parallel passages that demonstrate Elizabeth Barrett Browning's clear revision of William Wordsworth's autobiographical work. These central passages allow a new understanding of the poets' respective poetic visions. Aurora's poetic development illuminates the intrasubjective love central to Wordsworth's poetic vision and to Barrett Browning's own reading of Wordsworth. Through ironic dramatization, Barrett Browning engages Wordsworth's dialectic of vision by the "bodily eye" and the "intellectual eye" and rejuvenates and expands Wordsworth's revolutionary intersubjective poetic practice. Barrett Browning's alter-ego Aurora is able to intersubjectively embrace the urban "punctual presence," Wordsworth's blind Beggar.