Augusta Webster, Dramatic Forms, and the Religious Aesthetic of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book

It has sometimes been asserted that a refusal of straightforward communication is definitive of literature as such, or at least definitive of poetry. Such a definition is however not neutral; it reflects instead a preference for certain poets and poetic styles over others. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues have occasionally been presented as his greatest poetic achievement, highlighting the ironic distancing supposedly central to poetics. However, a look at Augusta Webster’s contemporaneous dramatic monologues reveals that Browning’s irony does not define the genre: Webster uses the form not to create distance between the speaker and the reader but to highlight the intellectual problem she is addressing. Looking at how both poets addressed the role of morality in human life, the chapter contends Webster’s poetry demonstrates that many poetic traditions have emphasized content just as much as form.

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“CONVENT THOUGHTS”: AUGUSTA WEBSTER AND THE BODY POLITICS OF THE VICTORIAN CLOISTER

Victorian Literature and Culture ◽

10.1017/s1060150303000159 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 31 (01) ◽

pp. 295-313

Author(s):

Robert P. Fletcher

Keyword(s):

The Body ◽

Body Politics ◽

Augusta Webster

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Augusta Webster and The Social History of Myth

Women s Studies ◽

10.1080/00497878.2011.561745 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 469-490

Author(s):

SHANYN FISKE

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

The Social ◽

Augusta Webster ◽

History Of

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Women Writers and the Medieval

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199669509.013.34 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 567-582

Author(s):

Clare Broome Saunders

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Women Writers ◽

Fifteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Social Issues ◽

Elizabeth Barrett Browning ◽

Joan Of Arc ◽

Augusta Webster ◽

And Gender ◽

The Middle Ages

This chapter explores the ways in which medievalism gave intellectual and politically astute women the imaginative means to discuss contemporary social issues and problems without facing the censure that more open social comment might induce. Using medieval linguistic translations, themes, motifs, and settings for diverse artistic, religious, and socio-political purposes, many women writers expressed subversive and challenging opinions: while others, like Charlotte Mary Yonge, offered tales of gentlemanly chivalry and iconic femininity that upheld conservative ideas about society and gender. Women writers’ paradoxical uses of medievalism were seen most clearly in the literature of the Crimean War, and embodied in the role of the reigning monarch, who was both passive chivalric icon and modern ruler. From Anglo-Saxon scholarship to courtly fifteenth-century images, invocations of the Middle Ages provided women with a rich source of allegory and comparison. Many writers perceived the Middle Ages as a time of greater social freedom than their own nineteenth-century experience: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster explored imaginatively the position of women in Victorian society through medieval settings. Many writers used medieval figures to illustrate contemporary issues: Joan of Arc became an emblem of social equality and an icon for the suffragists, and the legendary Guinevere was used to highlight the confines and injustices of contemporary marriage legislation. By focusing on the work of women writers, this chapter highlights their often overlooked contribution to the development of the medievalist discourse in the nineteenth century.

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