Elizabeth Barrett Browning's religious poetics: Congregationalist models of hymnist and preacher.

In recent work on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's conception of the poet figure, several critics have situated Aurora Leigh within the context of Victorian sage discourse. Sage discourse, defined by John Holloway as the expression of "notions about the world, man's place in it, and how he should live," appealed to Victorian writers as a mode of expression because the rapidly shifting dynamics of their age seemed to call either for new understandings of human significance or for the recovery of values that were being lost) Thomas Carlyle set the terms of sage discourse early in the period: whoever else "may forget this divine mystery [of the Universe]," he declared, "the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us." (2) As the gendered wording of Carlyle's (and Holloway's) definition reveals, Victorian sage discourse identified the rates as "a man." According to this configuration, only male poets and prose writers could claim the visionary authority of an Old Testament prophet to critique Victorian culture and offer alternative world views. The ideological configurations of respectable femininity also discouraged women writers from participating in such public and authoritative discourse. Yet, as Thais Morgan argues in her introduction to Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourses: Renegotiating Gender and Power, women writers frequently critiqued and subverted the patriarchal model of sage discourse by boldly entering "the 'masculine' world of socioeconomic conflict, theological polemic, and sexual politics," despite the risks associated with "adopting a 'masculine' tone of authority." (3) Margaret Reynolds and Marjorie Stone have each argued persuasively that Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh is just such a revisionary, gynocentric form of sage discourse. (4) Stone argues, for example, that while Aurora Leigh "enters the tradition of Victorian sage writing through its representation of a prophetic speaker" and "its vision of a new social and spiritual order," it intentionally subverts the authoritative stance of sage figures such as Carlyle by embodying the quest for a sustaining "Life Philosophy" through not one but "three interconnected spiritual autobiographies," of which two are women's (pp. 138, 149). And Rebecca Stott, extending some aspects of Stone's approach, locates the poem more precisely within Victorian nonconformist sage discourse, arguing that it "espouses non-conformist values such as the primacy of the individual conscience, commitment to social and political reform ... and to the importance of work." (5) These and other studies, such as Linda Lewis' discussion of the "wisdom figure" or prophetess in Aurora Leigh, all demonstrate the extent to which Barrett Browning made revisionist use of the notion of a prophet speaker. (6)

Yet while I agree with these scholars that Aurora Leigh at times figures the poet as prophet, in this study I want to suggest that the poet-as-prophet paradigm was actually a conflicted one for Barrett Browning, and not only because of gendered restrictions on its use. The figure of the cultural prophet imbued with an authoritative vision revealed to him alone for the benefit of others did not ultimately accord with Barrett Browning's democratic attitude as to how (religious) knowledge or wisdom is gained. Instead, Barrett Browning advocates and develops an alternative paradigm, one that moderates (though not completely erases) the poet-prophet stance. In her correspondence of the 1840s, Barrett names this alternative model for the poet as the preacher, a comparison she never later undercuts or replaces. In 1843, she writes, "[I] do hold that the poet is a preacher," and, two years later, "poets ... must preach their own doctrine . . . to be the means of any wisdom." (7) While the terms prophet and preacher are sometimes used interchangeably, (8) I believe that for Barrett Browning, the term preacher was a very specific concept, both in terms of the figure conceived and the words spoken by that figure. In the first part of this study, I delineate Barrett's concept of the preacher by interpreting her comments within the context of her actual experience with preachers in the Congregationalist denomination with which she associated herself at the time; I pay special attention to James Stratten, the London preacher whom Barrett much admired. I then demonstrate that this model of the poet as preacher arose for Barrett only after her exploration of the hymn as a poetic model reached its limits. From her hymns, the most intriguing of which is "The Measure," Barrett gradually developed a more intellectually engaged religious poetry rather than a strictly devotional one, perhaps using the hymn as an alternative to the vatic mode she was simultaneously exploring and associating with a male voice. I turn thirdly to a brief study of the mid-career religious poems--"The Seraphim," "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus," and "A Drama of Exile"--to see how Barrett uses dramatic genres to develop her initial concept of the poet as preacher; as E. Warwick Slinn points out in relation to Victorian poetry at large, social contexts and dialogue become intrinsic to these poems. (9) Finally, I conclude with studying Aurora Leigh in some detail to argue that this later poem, though not explicitly religious, attests to Barrett Browning's achievement in complicating the poet-prophet figure with an alternative preacher-like model and in attaining an hermeneutical voice in which language itself marks the person qualified to serve as poet.

The Poet as Preacher

Tracing out Barrett's emerging concept of the poet as preacher is particularly fascinating because of an unpublished manuscript in the Huntington Library, written in Barrett's hand in a notebook dated 1824. According to Sandra Donaldson, the manuscript may be a Christmas sermon in imitatio of Hooker and other theologians Barrett was studying at the time and may have been composed and delivered in a domestic setting while Barrett and her family were in Boulogne, away from their home church. (10) The sermon shows an intellectual dexterity and rhetorical eloquence in imitation of the neoclassical style favored by eighteenth-century preachers before the rise of the Evangelical movement. (11) As does the Homeric "The Battle of Marathon" and the Alexander Pope-like "An Essay on Mind," the Christmas sermon shows Barrett engaged with the classical mode in her early writing career. In all three cases, the tradition of imitatio outweighs innovation, and Barrett's first modeling of herself after a preacher results in a prose work even though she had earlier decided that poetry is "expressive of ... humanity's most exalted state" (BC, 1:353). Perhaps at this stage in her career, she did not regard her sermon as having anything to do with poetry. Only a short time later, however, in "An Essay on Mind," she begins merging the two concepts by naming as example of a rapt poet the flamboyant preacher Edward Irving. (12) In the next fifteen to twenty years, as Barrett increasingly identifies herself religiously as a Congregationalist (BC, 8:150, 11:10), this concept of the poet as preacher takes more defined shape." The Congregationalist understanding of the preacher, and particularly, Barrett's experience with James Stratten, her minister at Paddington Chapel in London in the 1830s and 1840s, are crucial factors in her evolving concept of the poet as preacher.

In contrast to the imitatio principle, Congregationalism stressed, above all, independence. The denomination was founded in the sixteenth century in opposition to the idea of a state or national church. Its members, also known as Independents, insisted on individual freedom and responsibility to study Scripture to learn religious truth. Three hundred years later, the same principles were articulated in the 1833 "Declaration of the Faith, Church Order and Discipline of the Congregational, or Independent Dissenters": "human traditions, fathers and councils, canons and creeds, possess no authority over the faith and practice of Christians." 14 Since Congregationalists tended to be members of the well-educated middle classes, their principle of independent religious inquiry materialized into a real knowledge of the Scriptures and an expectation that their preachers display the same. Those aspiring to the Congregationalist ministry, therefore, invariably attended seminary for several years before being ordained, a practice not yet standard in all denominations. (15) Even after completing seminary training, Congregationalist preachers had to earn the respect of both male and female members of their congregations. As the Dissenting minister David Ives put it, and as the centenary booklet for Paddington Chapel corroborates with regard to Stratten, these preachers were chosen and appointed after a probationary period by the "suffrage of the people," who also had the means to remove them from office should their knowledge or life prove unsatisfactory later. (16) Congregationalist ministers were fully aware of and in agreement with this interpretation of their position as approved guide but not authoritative leader. The Rev. George Conder, for example, reminded his congregation "of our deep-seated belief that the ministry is not a divine order of men having exclusive possession of a superior kind of grace, but only men whom God has called to the high honour of preaching his truth and ministering to the spiritual wants of the world." (17) While, therefore, preachers and priests in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church were seen as the inheritors of apostolic authority, Congregationalist preachers were viewed by their congregations as individuals trained in a particular task for the benefit of those who called them, but not as divine authorities and definitely not as prophets receiving a special revelation unavailable to others. They were interpretive guides, working within a community of knowledgeable readers of the biblical text, their words received with respect but not without critical analysis by each church member.

While this understanding of the Congregationalist preacher remained fairly consistent through several centuries, the rhetorical method by which he was expected to preach ...