SOURCE: Tucker, Herbert F. “Aurora Leigh: Epic Solutions to Novel Ends.” In Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender and Narrative Closure, edited by Alison Booth, pp. 62-85. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

In the following essay, Tucker examines the “epicizing conventions” in Aurora Leigh, discussing principles of structure, narrative technique, and the dichotomy between the human and the divine.

Like it or not—and readers have long done both—Aurora Leigh is a work of overwhelming fluency. It is the fitting masterpiece of a prolific poet and tireless correspondent who stands out as having lived, even more than other first-generation Victorians, with pen in hand. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's magnum opus floods the reader with a tide of writing that feels by turns irresistible and interminable, and that will settle for no level but its own. At once a veiled autobiography, a reluctant novel, and an aspiring epic, this...