VOL. 63, BOOK 1, PART C, 2025, pp. 174 – 188 Full text (En)
Author: Yana Rowland
Affiliation: Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv
Abstract
This paper delves into the range of fear that Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s collection Last Poems (1862) displays. While the poems (many previously unpublished) were selected by the poet herself and were meant to present the diversity of her spiritual strivings and intellectual pursuits, the stamp that her death on 29 June 1861 put on her project could be treated as an instance of epoché in its own right. By focusing on the first section (fourteen poems in all, apart from the political verses and paraphrases of the same volume), I aim at exploring the ontological-phenomenological scope of self-telling in terms of a compound dread of ruination, nothingness, and recognition. Counter-identification emerges as an instrument of chronicling the lyrical self’s exodic-exilic being.
Key words: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, fear, Last Poems (1862), ruination, nothingness, recognition, memory
