What is it about?

This article discusses Elizabeth Barrett Browning's efforts in Sonnets from the Portuguese to reclaim the genre of the amatory sonnet for women's lyricism. Even as Barrett Browning purges the genre of a pervasive invalidism, the sequence traces the restoration of the female poet from sickness to health.

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Why is it important?

The article is important because it shows Barrett Browning as self-consciously engaged in the renovation of received tropes. In the sonnet, she effectively revived a moribund genre.

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This page is a summary of: “Medicated Music”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, Victorian Literature and Culture, March 1995, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1060150300004162.
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