O BELLA LIBERTà

Proposal: ‘O bella libertà’: A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning


My great interest in the poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning has prompted me to request a visiting fellowship in the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University.

I should like to open and close this study with the sculptured images of the English Lord Leighton and the American Hiram Powers, the first showing the broken slave shackle on the harp on her tomb, the second, the ‘Greek Slave’, about which she wrote her famous sonnet.

I desire to re-formulate the image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as ‘Florentine’, a poetess deeply imbued with the life and culture of Florence and also possessing a spirit devoted to Italian liberty. I would like the opportunity to analyze her Casa Guidi Windows to understand more thoroughly her hopes for Italian unity. Likewise, Aurora Leigh shows us her intense concern with the liberation of children and women, while other writings demonstrate her passion for the freeing of slaves in America, of serfs in Russia, and of entire nations, such as, first, Greece, then Italy, from oppression. Her sonnet on Hiram Powers’ ‘Greek Slave’ sums up her totalizing concern. Her mortal reaction to the news of Cavour’s death reveals a soul deeply desirous of Italian unity.

If granted this Fellowship, I would study the materials in the library concerning Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s early formation (partly by her brilliant Irish tutor who taught her Greek and Italian), her love of Byron, then I would work with her in her Italian political context as shown in Casa Guidi Windows, concluding with the paired images of the ‘Greek Slave’ by Hiram Powers and the broken slave shackle on the harp on her tomb by Lord Leighton.