Chapter 9 Robert Browning
The personal life of Robert Browning falls into three phases: his years as a child and young bachelor, as a husband, and as a widower. Each of these phases is appropriately considered in relation to his development as a poet. The dramatic monologue, as Browning uses it, separates the speaker from the poet in such a way that the reader must work through the words of the speaker to discover the meaning of the poet. In addition to his experiments with the dramatic monologue, Browning also experimented with language and syntax. The grotesque rhymes and jaw-breaking diction that he often employs have been repugnant to some critics. Still, Browning’s poetry that separates it from the Victorian age is its style. Browning draws from a different tradition, more colloquial and discordant, a tradition that includes the poetry of John Donne, the soliloquies of Shakespeare, the comic verse of the early nineteenth-century poet Thomas Hood, and certain features of the narrative style of Chaucer. Browning’s role as a forerunner of twentieth-century literature is compatible with his essential Victorianism Energy and perhaps the most characteristic aspect of his writing and of the man. And energy is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of Victorian literature in general. Often, of course, such energy was misdirected. However, such buoyancy is a virtue imparting a creative vitality to all of Browning’s writing.
Critical Perspectives
1.New Historicism
Jennifer McDonell, in “Henry James, Literary Fame, and the Problem of Robert Browning”, examines Robert Browning’s and Henry James’s writings to consider their responses to, and implication in, the production, circulation, and consumption of late nineteenth-century celebrity. For James, there were two Brownings—the private, unknowable genius and the social personality. From the time he first met Browning until 1912, James held to this theory in letters, essays, biography, and fiction; the Browning “problem” became integral to James’s fascinated engagement with other problems at the heart of celebrity culture. Both writers attacked celebrity discourses and practices (biography, interviews, literary tourism) that constructed the life as a vital source of meaning, thus threatening to displace the writer’s work as privileged object of literary interpretation. Browning preceded James in insisting that the separation of public and private life was foundational to an impersonal aesthetics, and in exploring the fatal confusion between art and life that has been identified by theorists as central to celebrity culture.[1]
Oliver Wort, in “Staging Fra Lippo Lippi”, discusses the poem Fra Lippo Lippi by Robert Browning and examines the dramatic aspects of it based on theater director Edward Gordon Craig’s interest in adapting the poem into a performance piece. It looks at how Craig perceived Browning’s dramatic imagination through the monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi.[2]
Laura H. Clarke, in “Gathering Sense from Song: Robert Browning and the Romantic Epistemology of Music”, presents a criticism of the 19th century English poetry of Robert Browning. She discusses the role of music in Browning’s poetry, the influence of German romanticism on music, and the impact of German philosophy Arthur Schopenhauer on the epistemological aspects of Browning’s poetry.[3]
2.Ethical Study
Emily Walker Heady, in “Robert Browning, Theologian: The Incarnational Politics of Fra Lippo Lippi”, explores the use by 19th century poet Robert Browning of the doctrine of Incarnation in the poem Fra Lippo Lippi to highlight the intersections between aesthetics and ethics. Topics discussed include the connection between Browning’s work and the doctrine of Incarnation, the rejection of the claim that art should elevate the mind above the physical world and the difficulties of an incarnational artistic and religious praxis.[4]
3.New Criticism
Amy R.Wong, in “Town Talk and the Cause Célèbre of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book”, presents describing the town talkers of late seventeenth century within the poem The Ring and the Book of English poet Robert Browning. Amy discusses the central functions of town talk within the poem towards Browning’s own words. He examines the ways that repetition of the types of town talk within the poem in 1860s media forms.[5]
4.Thematic Study
Alison Chapman, in “Robert Browning’s Homesickness”, presents on the poem Home-Thoughts, from Abroad by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. The essay discusses the interrogative nature of the poem, the relationship between the country of England and Europe as expressed in the poem and the poem as a dramatic monologue. Alison makes the claim that the poem parodies both patriotism and lyricism.[6]
5.Narratology Study
Linda H. Peterson, in “Robert Browning’s Debut: Ambition Expressed, Ambition Denied”, presents on the Victorian poet and playwright Robert Browning. The essay discusses Browning’s poetic debut with the poem Pauline in 1833 and Browning’s ambition as demonstrated by his inclusion of an epigraph from the poet Clément Marot in his first publication, as well as a preface by astrologist Cornelius Agrippa. The essay also provides an analysis of the poem and discusses the significance of the paratexts of the poem and the publisher, Saunders and Otley.[7]
Ashby Bland Crowder, in “Attribution and Misattribution: New Poems by Robert Browning?”, presents on the confusion surrounding what poet Robert Browning wrote and did not write as a result of being married to a poet like himself. It attempts to sort through some of these problems of attribution and reclaims two poems for Robert Browning. It also argues that nine poems are possibly his and proposes the acceptance of his authorship of a newly-found poem, To Caroline.—A Lover’s Oath.[8]
Britta Martens, in “‘Hardly Shall I Tell My Joys and Sorrows’: Robert Browning’s Engagement with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poetics”, focuses on the poetic styles of poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning(EBB). While the courtship correspondence has long been recognized as the private locus for the couple’s dialogue on their respective poetic styles, critics have failed to discern the pursuit by Browning of the same “dialogue” within a number of his own poems. Browning assumes that poetry can, at least in EBB’s case, act as a quasitransparent means of self-expression, while he considers himself as yet unable to reveal his self in his poetry. All three poems analyzed have shown Browning experimenting with the personal mode, making the literary text an arena for playing out the oppositions between EBB’s and his own irreconcilable poetics.[9]
Patricia Rigg, in “Augusta Webster, Dramatic Forms, and the Religious Aesthetic of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book”, presents a critique of the narrative poem The Ring and the Book, by Robert Browning, focusing on the themes of dramatic form, religious aesthetics, and the influence of the contemporary poet Augusta Webster. Topics addressed include an overview of the professional relationship between Webster and Browning, the art of characterization through the melodrama and monologue forms, and the poem’s depiction of the religious characters of Pompilia and Jeanne.[10]
6.New Criticism(https://www.daowen.com)
Peter Merchant, in “Winking through the Chinks: Eros and Ellipsis in Robert Browning’s Love among the Ruins”, discusses “Robert Browning’s poem Love among the Ruins , the idea that the end is actually a starting point is examined. Peter goes on to look at love in further detail, its relation to the last line of the poem, and explains that although one expects the poem to come to an end it actually conveys the feeling of irresolution. The idea of an ellipsis is also discussed.[11]
Olivia Loksing Moy, in “Simian, Amphibian, and Able: Reevaluating Browning’s Caliban”, analyzes the poem Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island by British poet Robert Browning is presented. It uses new formalism and disability studies approach to examine how the physical form of the Caliban in the poem reflects Browning’s conceptions of poetic meaning, ability and disability, and imaginative power.[12]
7.Psychoanalytical Criticism
Linda M. Shires, in “Hardy’s Browning: Refashioning the Lyric”, presents on the Victorian poets Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy. The essay discusses Browning’s influence on Hardy, the elements of case logic, role play and the discourse of interruption in the lyric poetry of Hardy as well as offers an analysis of poems by the two men. The essay argues that the foundation of Browning’s poetry helped Hardy to alter the future of the lyric.[13]
【注释】
[1]McDonell J. “Henry James, Literary Fame, and the Problem of Robert Browning”. Critical Survey, 2015, 27(3):43-62.
[2]Wort O. “Staging Fra Lippo Lippi”. Victorian Poetry, 2018, 56(4):413-431.
[3]Clarke L H. “Gathering Sense from Song: Robert Browning and the Romantic Epistemology of Music”. Victorian Poetry, 2017, 55(4):471-494.
[4]Heady E W. “Robert Browning, Theologian: The Incarnational Politics of Fra Lippo Lippi”. Renascence, 2015, 67(2):147-160.
[5]Wong A R. “Town Talk and the Cause Célèbre of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book”. Modern Philology, 2016, 113(4):550-572.
[6]Chapman A. “Robert Browning’s Homesickness”.Victorian Poetry, 2012, 50(4):469-484.
[7]Peterson L H. “Robert Browning’s Debut: Ambition Expressed, Ambition Denied”. Victorian Poetry, 2012, 50(4):451-468.
[8]Crowder A B. “Attribution and Misattribution: New Poems by Robert Browning?”. Philological Quarterly, 2012, 91(3):443-464.
[9]Martens B. “ ‘Hardly Shall I Tell My Joys and Sorrows’: Robert Browning’s Engagement with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poetics”. Victorian Poetry, 2005, 43(1):75-97.
[10]Rigg P. “Augusta Webster, Dramatic Forms, and the Religious Aesthetic of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book”. Victorian Poetry, 2015, 53(1):1-14.
[11]Merchant P. “Winking through the Chinks: Eros and Ellipsis in Robert Browning’s Love among the Ruins”. Victorian Poetry, 2007, 45(4):349-368.
[12]Moy O L. “Simian, Amphibian, and Able: Reevaluating Browning’s Caliban”. Victorian Poetry, 2018, 56(4):381-411.
[13]Shires L M. “Hardy’s Browning: Refashioning the Lyric”. Victorian Poetry, 2012, 50(4):583-603.