CHILDREN CROSSING BORDERS: EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING’S JUVENILE CAUTIONARY TALES

Abstract

This paper focuses on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s juvenile cautionary prose-fiction tales in the period 1814 – 1818: Sebastian or the Lost Child, The Way to Humble Pride, Disobedience, Julia or Virtue, and Charles de Grandville. Border-crossing refers to the hardships of learning through experience in the process of individuation. A context of juvenile writing in England (late 18th – early 19th centuries) is suggested. Another purpose of the current study is to examine a child’s frontier movement in view of the literary act as self-exegesis.