Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Spiritual Progress: Face to Face with God

Lewis (English, Bethany College) studies Browning's religion as poetry and her poetry as religion, interpreting her literary life as an arduous spiritual quest. Using insights from contemporary feminist thought, she argues that Browning's religious assumptions and insights range from the conventional to the iconoclastic and that her political and social ideology are consistent in light of her spiritual quest. Draws on Browning's most admired poetry as well as her early poems and her political works, and compares her ideology to that of early feminists, conservatives, and male Victorian poets. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR