The Discourse of Freedom as a Literary Manifesto in Eastern and Western Europe: Alecu Russo and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Discourse of Freedom as a Literary Manifesto in Eastern and Western Europe: Alecu Russo and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Summary/Abstract: Freedom and democracy have always been connected with the concept of the Republic as the ideal state. In this respect, the revolutions of 1848 in Europe were grounded both on the peoples‟ desire to abolish monarchy, tyranny or a foreign government or all of them at the same time and on a particular kind of discourse in which the metaphorical images of „mother‟, „sons‟, „daughters‟ and divine interference were used frequently across borders and languages to illustrate both the image of oppression and that of freedom. This essay is concerned with two texts published in 1850 and 1851, respectively, meant to inflame their readers, to persuade them to rise to change the „old‟ order of the world. While living in Florence, Elizabeth Barrett Browning became famous for the publication of Casa Guidi Windows (1851) in which she describes the revolt of the people of Tuscany against the Austrian occupation. Enflamed by the revolutionary ideals while living in Paris, Alecu Russo, a Moldavian intellectual, writes and publishes Cântare României (Hymn to Romania) in 1850. The text is a literary manifesto used by the people in Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia (the regions that form present day Romania) in their fight for freedom. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alecu Russo never met; yet in the attempt to create a re-territorialization of Tuscany and Romania respectively, both texts have in common a similar range of metaphors and rhetorical devices whose analysis will be the focus of this article.

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