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'Romantic Ghosts: the Refusal of Mourning in Emily Brontë's Poetry'
Steven Vine
Victorian Poetry, Volume: 37, Issue: 1, Pages: 99 - 117
Swansea University Author: Steven Vine
Abstract
The essay examines the logic of the spectral and ‘ghostly’ in Emily Brontë’s poetry. It sees the phantoms that populate the poems as figures of loss and mourning – specifically, as mirages of poetic power and visionary sublimity. As spectral wraiths, these elusive figures embody both power and depri...
| Published in: | Victorian Poetry |
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| Published: |
1999
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa17980 |
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| Abstract: |
The essay examines the logic of the spectral and ‘ghostly’ in Emily Brontë’s poetry. It sees the phantoms that populate the poems as figures of loss and mourning – specifically, as mirages of poetic power and visionary sublimity. As spectral wraiths, these elusive figures embody both power and deprivation, and the essay argues that they denote the spectral sur-vival and irrecoverable loss of Romantic visionary power in Brontë. The essay contends that a process of mourning and refused mourning governs Brontë’s relationship as a Victorian woman poet to the legacy of male Romanticism, and that Wordsworth’s ‘visionary gleam’ of imaginative power haunts her work. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
1 |
| Start Page: |
99 |
| End Page: |
117 |