Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2008 A Poetics of the Soul: Devotional Poetry in Elizabeth Barrett rB owning; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Christina Rossetti Heather Cianciola Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Cianciola, H. (2008). A Poetics of the Soul: Devotional Poetry in Elizabeth Barrett rB owning; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Christina Rossetti (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/410 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A POETICS OF THE SOUL: DEVOTIONAL POETRY IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING; ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON; AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for The degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Heather Shippen Cianciola August 2008 Copyright by Heather Shippen Cianciola 2008 A POETICS OF THE SOUL: DEVOTIONAL POETRY IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING; ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON; AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI By Heather Shippen Cianciola Approved July 18, 2008 _______________________________ _______________________________ Laura Callanan, Ph.D. Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English Professor of English ______________________________ Anne Brannen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English _______________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Acting Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Professor of English iii ABSTRACT A POETICS OF THE SOUL: DEVOTIONAL POETRY IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING; ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON; AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI By Heather Shippen Cianciola August 2008 Dissertation Supervised by Laura Callanan, Ph.D. No. of Pages in Text: 194 This study explores devotional poetry of the nineteenth century as a poetic discourse in which tropes of the human soul connect spiritual reflection with lived experience in order to engage literary, religious, and social issues in Victorian England. Like G. B. Tennyson’s Victorian Devotional Poetry: The Tractarian Mode (1989), this project situates individual poets in their cultural and religious contexts, and it encourages an understanding of devotional verse as an important feature of Victorian poetry. In addition to these aims, this dissertation surveys both popular and lesser-known devotional verse by poets not formally part of the Oxford Movement in order to demonstrate the far- reaching influence of devotional poetry. Defining devotional poetry in a broad sense, this analysis examines ways in which devotional verse employs tropes of the soul in order to reveal, evaluate, and challenge Victorian concerns with progress and modernity as well as social and gender relationships. Specifically, Elizabeth Barrett Browning challenges religious and literary authority as a woman writer whose vivid use of devotional language iv displays the soul in its formative processes and contests readers’ ideas of Christian unity. Quite by contrast, as a well-established male writer, Alfred, Lord Tennyson employs tropes of the soul in In Memoriam to provide a dialectic of faith and doubt and to emphasize the variegated and complex nature of a “modern,” progressive faith. Lastly, Christina Rossetti’s devotional verse, when read in relationship to her ideas of secrecy, reveals a powerful way in which disempowered “fallen” women might regain their spiritual and social equilibrium. One goal of this dissertation is to work against the assumption that devotional poetry is merely simplistic piety in verse, which becomes less relevant and interesting as poetry of skepticism and doubt emerges in the nineteenth century. This study suggests a different trajectory for religious literature: one that accounts for the vibrancy and complexity of devotional verse as it emerges in the works of a variety of Victorian poets. v DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Dr. Janice Brown, who inspired the project and convinced me that devotional verse is indeed good poetry. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am deeply indebted to many people who made my writing possible and my thinking clearer throughout the dissertation process. First of all, I am grateful to the Duquesne University English Department, whose Dissertation Fellowship for 2007-2008 helped me immensely in the completion of this study. I am also grateful to Dr. Albert Labriola, Dr. Anne Brannen, and Dr. Dan Watkins for their incisive and thoughtful feedback during all the stages of this endeavor. My dissertation adviser, Dr. Laura Callanan, deserves more thanks than I can express for her faith in this project and her constant example of what it means to be a rigorous and ethical scholar who is also an authentic and caring human being. I would like to thank Christianity & Literature for their permission to publish a portion of Chapter 2 on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which will appear in a forthcoming volume of the journal as an essay titled “‘Mine Earthly Heart Should Dare’: Elizabeth Barrett’s Devotional Poetry.” I thank Hélène and Richard Shippen, my parents; Reid, Stephanie, Eleanor, and Avery Shippen; Darlene and Duane Fisk; The Rev. Paul Cooper and the wonderful folks at St. Christopher’s; and many faithful friends for their patience and support, even as they wondered what this project was about (or when it would be finished). Jenny Bangsund deserves a special word of thanks for reminding me to stay calm and keep writing. I am infinitely grateful to Kristianne Kalata Vaccaro for countless shared hours of sane work. And above all, I thank my husband James, “my heart’s heart,” for his patience and devotion. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………iv-v Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...vi Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………….....vii 1 Introduction: “Enlarging the Sphere” of Victorian Devotional Poetry 1.1 Victorian Devotional Poetry: Engaging Tradition and “Enlarging the Sphere”………………………………………………………………………...1-11 1.2 Theorizing the “Self” of Devotional Poetry……………………………...11-21 1.3 Devotional Poetry and Victorian Poetics…………………………………21-30 2 “Mine Earthly Heart Should Dare”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Devotional Poetry 2.1 Introduction……..……………………………………………………….31-34 2.2. Barrett and the Critics—Her 1838 Poetics of Daring (Devotional) Speech…….…………………………………………………………………..34-46 2.3 “Sneering” at Samuel Johnson in The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838): The Preface…...…………………………………………………………..47-54 2.4 “Sneering” at Samuel Johnson in The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838): The Poems………………………………………………………………..54-71 2.5 “I am black, I am black / And yet God made me”: Race, Gender, and Devotional Poetics in The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point …………...71-83 2.6 Conclusion: Finding “Use” for Devotional Poetry in Barrett Browning’s Art.....................................................................................................................83-86 2.7 Epilogue: Barrett Browning’s Poems of 1844…...……………………….86-90 3 “Modern” Devotion: Faith, Doubt, and Progress in Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850) 3.1 Historical and Critical Context: Tennyson’s “Faith”…………………...91-100 viii 3.2 Tropes of the Soul: In Memoriam and Form………..…………………101-108 3.3. Spiritual Formation and Progress: The Faith/Doubt Dialectic………..108-116 4 “A Hiding Place for Thee”: Christina Rossetti and the Power of Secrets 4.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………117-119 4.2 “There’s No Friend Like a Sister”: Fallen Women and their Advocates………………………………………………………………….119-133 4.3 Secrecy and the Poetics of Reserve…..………………………………..133-147 4.4. Some Definitions of Secrecy in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)………………………………………………………………………147-154 4.5 The Power of Secrets in The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866)……………………………………………………………………....155-169 4.6 Conclusion: “What God Knows Her to Be”……..……………….……169-171 5 Conclusion…………...……………………………………………………172-174 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..175-182 Appendix I…………………………………………………………………………183-187 ix Chapter 1: Introduction “Enlarging the Sphere” of Victorian Devotional Poetry I trust I shall not be accused of presumption for the endeavor which I have here made to enlarge, in some degree, the sphere of religious poetry, by associating with this themes more of the emotions, the affections, and even the purer imaginative enjoyments of daily life, than may have been hitherto admitted within the hallowed circle. —Felicia Hemans, Scenes and Hymns of Life (1834) Only by not mistreating oneself – by accepting that you can have no final dominion over yourself, that you are a stranger to yourself – can your dealings with yourself be a model for your dealings with others. —Terry Eagleton, After Theory (2005) 1.1 Victorian Devotional Poetry: Engaging Tradition and “Enlarging the Sphere” In addition to their obsession with progress and “modern” life, English Victorians sought new and various ways for articulating religious experience. As Michael Wheeler suggests, “[m]any of the most burning issues in Victorian Britain were religious controversies” (5); and from these controversies a passionate engagement between spiritual life and Victorian culture arose. A vital historical and literary link to such “burning issues” is found in Victorian devotional poetry, a mode of nineteenth-century