Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T06:06:04.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Death of Pan: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Romantic Ego

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Margaret M. Morlier
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the past two decades Elizabeth Barrett Browning has become most appreciated for her 1856 feminist epic Aurora Leigh, a poem in which she asserted her “highest convictions upon Life and Art.” Before publishing Aurora Leigh, however, she said that one of her most important poems was “The Dead Pan.” When she published her two-volume collection of Poems in 1844, she insisted that “The Dead Pan” be placed last for emphasis. This poem of thirty-nine stanzas, each ending with some variation of the phrase “Pan is dead,” is often overlooked today in discussions of Barrett Browning's development probably because its theme appears outdated to modern readers. Beginning with a catalogue of classical deities—such as Juno, Apollo, and Cybele—shocked by the crucifixion of Christ, the poem depicts the death of these classical gods along with their representative, Pan. In the final third of the poem they are replaced by the Christian god and his martyred son. Then the refrain “Pan is dead” changes in meaning: no longer the lament of the classical gods, the refrain becomes a joyful proclamation of the Christian poet. On a first reading, “The Dead Pan” seems simply to celebrate orthodox Christianity; it is still generally remembered as a Victorian expression of pietism or, in Douglas Bush's facetious words of 1937, a poem in which the “Greek gods are brought face to face with Christian truth and put to rout” (268).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 18 , Spring 1990 , pp. 131 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Ed. and introd. by Porter, Charlotte and Clarke, Helen A.. 6 vols. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1900. Rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Ed. Kenyon, Frederic G.. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1897.Google Scholar
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford 1836–1854. Eds. Raymond, Meredith B. and Sullivan, Mary Rose. 3 vols. Winfield, Kansas: Wedgestone Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Home. Ed. Townshend Mayer, S. R., 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1877.Google Scholar
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846. Ed. Kintner, Elvan. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Blake, Kathleen. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Wordsworth: The Romantic Poet as a Woman.” Victorian Poetry 24 (1986): 387–98.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Robert. “Pan: Epilogue.” The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan. London: Chatto & Windus, 1901. 1: 185.Google Scholar
Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1937.Google Scholar
Christ, Carolt. Victorian and Modern Poetics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.Google Scholar
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Jackson, H. J.. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Cooper, Helen. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Woman & Artist. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 1988.Google Scholar
Corson, Hiram. “The Cost of a Poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's ‘A Musical Instrument.’” Poet-Lore 7 (1895): 259–63.Google Scholar
Diehl, Joanne Feit. “‘Come Slowly—Eden’: An Exploration of Women Poets and Their Muse.” Signs 3 (1978): 572–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Gregory, Patrick. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homans, Margaret. Women Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, and Emily Dickinson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Merivale, PatriciaPan the Goat-God: His Myth in Modern Times. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mermin, Dorothy. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Origins of a New Poetry. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W.The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Eds. Ingpen, Roger and Peck, Walter E.. 10 vols. New York: Gordian Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Skultans, Vieda. “Mediums, Controls and Eminent Men.” In Women's Religious Experience: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Holden, Pat. LondonCroom Helm, 1983.Google Scholar
Thomson, James. The Seasons and the Castle of Indolence. Ed. Sambrook, James. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Thorpe, James. “Elizabeth Barrett's Commentary on Shelley: Some Marginalia.” MLN 66 (1951): 455–58.Google Scholar
Trollope, Thomas Adolpus. What I Remember. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1888.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, William. William Wordsworth: The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850. Eds. Wordsworth, Jonathan, Abrams, M. H., and Gill, Stephen. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.Google Scholar