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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Entre air et terre: les éléments dans Aurora Leigh d'Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Surprinsingly enough, despite the fact that it is strongly associated with femininity, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has no use for water as an element in her narrative of Aurora Leigh's progress as a poet in the eponymous poem. Fire is only used in its usual purifying function. But she does construct a complex architecture from the elements of aire and earth. She starts with the generally accepted duality of earth, both nurturing and a symbol of death. She multiplies the associations with air: angels and squirrels, wind and mountains, to cite only a few. She then examines and redefines the relationships between these two elements in liofe and in poetry and finally reaches a mystical union anchored in the body.