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David44's avatar
8dEdited

An interesting approach, except ... Aurora Leigh? Really? I speak from hard experience here: I once had the bright idea of teaching a class which included Aurora Leigh as one of the main set books, and my students absolutely hated it.

It's one of those books that, I feel, works much better as an idea - there are lots of great themes in it to discuss, including some of highly topical interest (sexual violence, for example): it's very fruitful for certain kinds of literary scholarship. But it's really hard going for modern readers (again, at least going by my experience), partly because it ends up in a place which is not at all what would be called conventionally feminist (to put it mildly), partly because of the ludicrous plot-twist in the final act, but mostly because, to be frank, the writing just isn't that memorable. EBB was a remarkable poet on a small scale, but I feel she struggled to maintain that kind of consistency in a book-length narrative poem - she isn't Tennyson or Wordsworth, let alone Milton. There are occasional sparks of brilliance in particular lines or sections, but one can read pages of Aurora Leigh without coming across any.

Maybe Bennett found more to his taste in it than I do. And I would probably agree that one shouldn't launch into Paradise Lost too early in one's poetic explorations. But there are many, many narrative poems out there which are much more accessible and attractive than Aurora Leigh.

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Prashant Raturi's avatar

Wow. Let me try if only during lunch break. Thanks.

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