Affiliation:
1. Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv
Abstract
Published first in 1969, Diary by E. B. B. (1831–1832) has been an intersection of scholarly debates on nineteenth-century English literature, femininity, diurnal narrative, and aesthetic experience. A confessional document of the last two years of Elizabeth’s life at the family estate of Hope End, the diary throws her unique self-creationist and self-revisionary impulses into relief. It is an outstanding prose-fiction piece of evidence of her overall penchant for self-acclaim by way of self-denial. This paper aims at tracing the development of the woman writer in view of the immediacy and ontological priority of an implied Other found at the core of self-writing, as Elizabeth’s diary signals. A modicum of contextual references to some of E. B. Browning’s poetical works brings out her self-reflexive leanings. Finally, it could be argued that self-questioning distinguishes Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a polemicist whose private diary identifies the concept of time as the kernel of her perception of identity as responsibility.
Publisher
Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen
Reference45 articles.
1. Anderson, L. (2001). Autobiography. London & New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203181652.
2. Barrett, E. (1974). Two autobiographical essays by Elizabeth Barrett. Browning Institute Studies, 2(March), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0092472500000407.
3. BC. (1984-1985). The Brownings’ correspondence. Vols 2-3 (1827-1837). Ph. Kelley, & R. Hudson (Eds.). Wedgestone Press.
4. Beauvoir, S. de. (1956). The second sex. H. M. Parshley, London: Jonathan Cape.
5. Benstock, Sh. (1999). The Female Self Engendered: Autobiographical writing and theories of Selfhood. In A. B. Kimmich, & M. W. Brownley (Eds.), Women and autobiography. (pp. 3-13). Rowman & Littlefield.