Elizabeth Barrett Browning Trivia

1. What collection of 44 love sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was initially published in the guise of a translation?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Elizabeth was reluctant to publish these rather personal poems, and so she considered publishing them under the title "Sonnets translated from the Bosnian" so they might appear to be translations. Her husband Robert, however, suggested she instead use the title "Sonnets from the Portuguese". Elizabeth was, after all, an admirer of the Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões, and Robert himself often referred to her by the nickname of "my little Portuguese." The collection was published in 1850 and was quite popular in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's own lifetime.

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: 44

The 44 poems were written circa 1845-46, in the period leading up to the marriage of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning. It is believed that Elizabeth did not share the sonnets with Robert until three years after their marriage.

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: death

These are the closing lines to sonnet number 43 from "Sonnets from the Portuguese". The poem reads: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise; I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death." "How do I love thee?" remains one of Browning's most popular sonnets to this day, and the poem is frequently anthologized.

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: 1850

Elizabeth was, at first, reluctant to publish the sonnets, due to their personal nature, and it was Robert who insisted that the poetry should be shared, stating them to be the finest written since Shakespeare's time.

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: The Battle of Marathon

"The Battle of Maldon" is an old English poem celebrating a 991 battle in which the Anglo-Saxon army was unable to repulse a Viking raid. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is by Lord Tennyson and recounts the Battle of Balaclava. The Battle of Marathon occurred during the first Persian invasion of Greece under King Darius I, in 490 BC. The Greek army defeated a much larger Persian force. The poem was written in heroic couplets.

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Italy

Elizabeth's father was strongly against any marriage for her, and so the couple married secretly on 12th September 1846 and moved to Italy.

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Prometheus Bound

The Ancient Greek tragedy "Prometheus Bound" is typically attributed to Aeschylus and is based on the myth of the Titan Prometheus, who defied the gods to bring fire down to mankind, for which he was punished. In 1833, Browning published "Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems".

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Let me count the ways.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Slavery

Browning was opposed to slavery and rejoiced in the 1833 Emancipation Act that abolished it in Britain. She wrote two poems about slavery, including "A Curse for a Nation" and "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point". In the former poem, the poet hears an angel speak who tells her to take up her pen and write "a Nation's curse for me." The poet relents and writes the curse: "Because yourselves are standing straight In the state Of Freedom's foremost acolyte, Yet keep calm footing all the time On writhing bond-slaves, -- for this crime This is the curse. Write..."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Child Labor

The poem was first published in "Blackwood's Magazine" in 1843 and was a protest against the exploitation of children for manual labor. It comes in a long line of literary protests against such exploitations, such as William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" in 1794. Outcries of this kind eventually led to the reform of child labor laws. In 1847, work hours for children were limited to ten a day, and in 1901, the minimum age for labor was raised to 12. The poem rails against the use of children in the mines and factories: "Go out, children, from the mine and from the city - Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do - Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!" The poem starkly describes the children's suffering in the factories: "Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals - Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! - Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, As if Fate in each were stark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark."

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Ba

Elizabeth's family called her Ba, and this Sonnet describes how Robert came to also call her by that name. Bro was the pet name for her brother, Edward.

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: heart

In these lines from "The Cry of the Children," Browning criticizes England's exploitation of children to produce more goods and grow richer: "Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, And your purple shews your path; But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence Than the strong man in his wrath!" The poem was inspired by a report from The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children's Employment, which came out in 1842, which also inspired other literary reactions from writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens.

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Her hand

"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;"

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Sabbath Morning at Sea

The poem was set to music in 1899 as part of Elgar's song-cycle "Sea Pictures". Browning's was the third song in the cycle. The poem beings: "The ship went on with solemn face: To meet the darkness on the deep. The solemn ship went onward. I bowed down weary in the place; For parting tears and present sleep Had weighed mine eyelids downward." "Sebastian, or, Virtue Rewarded" was written when Elizabeth was just nine years old and was never published.

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers

...and it ends with "Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine." I hope you enjoyed the quiz, and a little glimpse into the romantic world of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: mute

In this poem from "Sonnets from the Portuguese", the speaker picks up a stack of love letters and ruminates, "My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!" Despite being inanimate objects, those letters "seem alive and quivering," because the speaker's own "tremulous hands" are shaking as she loosens the string around the bundle and lets them drop down on her knee. She then re-reads the letters with great depth of feeling: "This said, - he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! - this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine - and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Pan

In Greek mythology, Pan, often referred to in literature as "the great god Pan," is the god of shepherds and wilds, and he is often associated with rustic music, such as the pan flute, fashioned from hollow reeds. He has the horns, legs, and hindquarters of a goat and the top half of a man. Browning's poem describes Pan fashioning the reed into a musical instrument: "High on the shore sat the great god Pan While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Love's sake only

This is the opening line of Sonnet 14 from the "Sonnets to the Portuguese:" "If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only." The poet does not want her lover to love her for any physical feature or mannerism: "Do not say, 'I love her for her smile - her look - her way Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day.' For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee - and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: George Sand

George Sand was the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who wrote such works as "Valentine" (1832), "Pauline" (1839), and "Little Fadette: A Domestic Story" (1849). Browning's poem about her is titled "To George Sand: A Desire" and begins, "Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance And answers roar for roar, as spirits can..." Browning wrote another poem to George Sand titled "To George Sand: A Recognition" which begins: "True genius, but true woman! Dost deny Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity?" Currer Bell was the male pen name of novelist Charlotte Bronte while George Elliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans.

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