"My Name to me a Sadness Wears": Self and Other According to "Diary by E. B. B." Cover Image

"My Name to me a Sadness Wears": Self and Other According to "Diary by E. B. B."
"My Name to me a Sadness Wears": Self and Other According to "Diary by E. B. B."

Author(s): Yana Rowland
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Нов български университет
Keywords: Elizabeth Barrett Barret (Browning); Diary; Self; Other; Care; Guilt; Death; hermeneutics;

Summary/Abstract: This paper dwells on the issue of selfhood in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Diary (1831 - 1832). It explores individuation against three major presences in the poetess's life: her father (and family), Hugh Stuart Boyd, and literature. The employed strategy of research includes a phenomenological (interspersed with feminist touches) focus on select excerpts from the Diary which reveal the writer's concern for Self as the recognition of the priority of a precursory Other. Observations are made on the limits of human perception, time and space as human variables, the ontological essence of interpretation, and memory as a premise for cognizing life as care. A rare example of prose-fiction in the poetess's oeuvre, her diary could be read as an instance of simultaneous self-nullification and self-affirmation, which offers possibilities for a dialectical definition of female genius as dialogue through narrative.

  • Issue Year: 7/2021
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 209-226
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: English