DOCSLIB.ORG

Introduction to Robert Browning

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Introduction to Robert Browning Introduction to Robert Browning Hiram Corson Introduction to Robert Browning Table of Contents Introduction to Robert Browning............................................................................................................................1 Hiram Corson.................................................................................................................................................1 PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................9 Note to the Second Edition..........................................................................................................................10 Note to the Third Edition.............................................................................................................................10 INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................................11 I. The Spiritual Ebb and Flow exhibited in English Poetry from Chaucer to Tennyson and Browning.....11 Popularity.....................................................................................................................................................25 II. The Idea of Personality and of Art as an intermediate agency of Personality, as embodied in Browning's Poetry.......................................................................................................................................27 2. The Idea of Personality as embodied in Browning's Poetry....................................................................34 3. Art as an Intermediate Agency of Personality.........................................................................................38 III. Mr. Browning's "Obscurity"..................................................................................................................48 `My Last Duchess'........................................................................................................................................58 IV. Browning's Verse...................................................................................................................................59 V. Arguments of the Poems.........................................................................................................................63 POEMS........................................................................................................................................................87 Wanting is What?.....................................................................................................................................88 My Star.........................................................................................................................................................88 The Flight of the Duchess............................................................................................................................89 1....................................................................................................................................................................89 2....................................................................................................................................................................89 3....................................................................................................................................................................90 4....................................................................................................................................................................91 5....................................................................................................................................................................92 6....................................................................................................................................................................93 7....................................................................................................................................................................94 8....................................................................................................................................................................94 9....................................................................................................................................................................95 10..................................................................................................................................................................95 11..................................................................................................................................................................96 12..................................................................................................................................................................98 13..................................................................................................................................................................99 14................................................................................................................................................................101 15................................................................................................................................................................102 16................................................................................................................................................................109 17................................................................................................................................................................110 The Last Ride Together..............................................................................................................................112 1..................................................................................................................................................................112 2..................................................................................................................................................................114 3..................................................................................................................................................................114 4..................................................................................................................................................................114 5..................................................................................................................................................................115 6..................................................................................................................................................................115 7..................................................................................................................................................................115 8..................................................................................................................................................................116 9..................................................................................................................................................................116 10................................................................................................................................................................117 i Introduction to Robert Browning Table of Contents Introduction to Robert Browning By the Fireside........................................................................................................................................................117 1..................................................................................................................................................................117 2..................................................................................................................................................................117 3..................................................................................................................................................................118 4..................................................................................................................................................................118 5..................................................................................................................................................................118 6..................................................................................................................................................................119 7..................................................................................................................................................................119 8..................................................................................................................................................................119 9..................................................................................................................................................................119 10................................................................................................................................................................120
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Elements of Poet :Y
    CHAPTER 3 The Elements of Poet :y A Poetry Review Types of Poems 1, Lyric: subjective, reflective poetry with regular rhyme scheme and meter which reveals the poet’s thoughts and feelings to create a single, unique impres- sion. Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" William Blake, "The Lamb," "The Tiger" Emily Dickinson, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" Langston Hughes, "Dream Deferred" Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" Walt Whitman, "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" 2. Narrative: nondramatic, objective verse with regular rhyme scheme and meter which relates a story or narrative. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" T. S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi" Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Wreck of the Deutschland" Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" 3. Sonnet: a rigid 14-line verse form, with variable structure and rhyme scheme according to type: a. Shakespearean (English)--three quatrains and concluding couplet in iambic pentameter, rhyming abab cdcd efe___~f gg or abba cddc effe gg. The Spenserian sonnet is a specialized form with linking rhyme abab bcbc cdcd ee. R-~bert Lowell, "Salem" William Shakespeare, "Shall I Compare Thee?" b. Italian (Petrarchan)--an octave and sestet, between which a break in thought occurs. The traditional rhyme scheme is abba abba cde cde (or, in the sestet, any variation of c, d, e). Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "How Do I Love Thee?" John Milton, "On His Blindness" John Donne, "Death, Be Not Proud" 4. Ode: elaborate lyric verse which deals seriously with a dignified theme. John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" Blank Verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
    [Show full text]
  • Gcse English Literature (8702)
    GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE (8702) Past and present: poetry anthology For exams from 2017 Version 1.0 June 2015 AQA_EngLit_GCSE_v08.indd 1 31/07/2015 22:14 AQA GCSE English Literature Past and present: poetry anthology All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing on any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of the licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Notice to teachers: It is illegal to reproduce any part of this work in material form (including photocopying and electronic storage) except under the following circumstances: i) where you are abiding by a licence granted to your school or institution by the Copyright Licensing Agency; ii) where no such licence exists, or where you wish to exceed the terms of a licence, and you have gained the written permission of The Publishers Licensing Society; iii) where you are allowed to reproduce without permission under the provisions of Chapter 3 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Photo permissions 5 kieferpix / Getty Images, 6 Georgios Kollidas/Fotolia, 8 Georgios Kollidas/Fotolia, 9 Georgios Kollidas/Fotolia, 11 Georgios Kollidas/Fotolia, 12 Photos.com/Thinkstock, 13 Stuart Clarke/REX, 16 culture-images/Lebrecht, 16,© Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy, 17 Topfoto.co.uk, 18 Schiffer-Fuchs/ullstein
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Browning (1812–1889) Robert Browning Was a Romantic Poet in Great Effect When Disclosing a Macabre Or Every Sense of the Word
    THE GREAT Robert POETS Browning POETRY Read by David Timson and Patience Tomlinson NA192212D 1 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix 3:49 2 Life in a Love 1:11 3 A Light Woman 3:42 4 The Statue and the Bust 15:16 5 My Last Duchess 3:53 6 The Confessional 4:59 7 A Grammarian’s Funeral 8:09 8 The Pied Piper of Hamelin 7:24 9 ‘You should have heard the Hamelin people…’ 8:22 10 The Lost Leader 2:24 11 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister 3:55 12 The Laboratory 3:40 13 Porphyria’s Lover 3:47 14 Evelyn Hope 3:49 15 Home Thoughts from Abroad 1:19 16 Pippa’s Song 0:32 Total time: 76:20 = David Timson = Patience Tomlinson 2 Robert Browning (1812–1889) Robert Browning was a romantic poet in great effect when disclosing a macabre or every sense of the word. He was an ardent evil narrative, as in The Laboratory, or The lover who wooed the poet Elizabeth Confessional or Porphyria’s Lover. Barrett despite fierce opposition from Sometimes Browning uses this matter- her tyrannical father, while as a poet – of-fact approach to reduce a momentous inheriting the mantle of Wordsworth, occasion to the colloquial – in The Keats and Shelley – he sought to show, Grammarian’s Funeral, for instance, in in the Romantic tradition, man’s struggle which a scholar has spent his life pursuing with his own nature and the will of God. knowledge at the expense of actually But Browning was no mere imitator of enjoying life itself.
    [Show full text]
  • My Last Duchess Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning 1812–1889
    The Influence of Romanticism My Last Duchess RL 1 Cite strong and thorough Porphyria’s Lover textual evidence to support inferences drawn from the Poetry by Robert Browning text. RL 5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts KEYWORD: HML12-944A of a text contribute to its overall VIDEO TRAILER structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact. RL 10 Read and comprehend literature, Meet the Author including poems. SL 1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions. Robert Browning 1812–1889 “A minute’s success,” remarked the poet character in an emotionally charged situation. Robert Browning, “pays for the failure of While critics attacked his early dramatic years.” Browning spoke from experience: poems, finding them difficult to understand, did you know? for years, critics either ignored or belittled Browning did not allow the reviews to keep his poetry. Then, when he was nearly 60, him from continuing to develop this form. Robert Browning . he became an object of near-worship. • became an ardent Secret Love In 1845, Browning met the admirer of Percy Bysshe Precocious Child An exceptionally bright poet Elizabeth Barrett and began a famous Shelley at age 12. child, Browning learned to read and write romance that has been memorialized in both • achieved fluency in by the time he was 5 and composed his film and literature. Against the wishes of Latin, Greek, Italian, and first, unpublished volume of poetry at Barrett’s overbearing father, the two poets French by age 14. 12. At the age of 21 he published his first married in secret in 1846 and eloped to • wrote the children’s book, Pauline (1833), to negative reviews.
    [Show full text]
  • Marling Hall (1942)
    MARLING HALL (1942) Hilary Temple 5 Dean Swift (Jonathan Swift): ‘I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.’ Works of Swift ed. W. Scott 1814 vol 1 p.443 Actaeon: hunter in Greek myth who accidentally saw Artemis bathing, was turned into a stag and killed by her hounds+MB 236, AF 200 There is here and there a grayling but mostly there isn’t: ‘I wind about, and in and out,/With here and there a blossom sailing,/And here and there a lusty trout,/And here and there a grayling.’ Tennyson, The Brook 6 One letter changed in Nutfield: Lord Nuffield, manufacturer of the first mass-market British car, the Morris. +CC106 dog watch: the two short watches of the 24 hours, 16.00-18.00 and 18.00-20.00. Also p. 170 9 One that has had losses: Is this a quotation? 13 Teaching is no inheritance: ‘Service is No Inheritance, Or Rules to Servants’. Jonathan Swift – subtitled ‘To be read constantly one night every week upon going to bed’. Various versions by AT include Reading law … SH48; poor relations PE378; Red Cross LAR98; service LAR278; a fellowship HaR 190; teaching 196; service NTL286. 15 Pook’s Piece an allusion to Kipling’s [Puck of] Pook’s Hill? Appears as Pooker’s in Wild Strawberries 16 Bench, ie in court as a magistrate – a US edition misprinted this as Beach 19 race : more usually ‘racé’ or ‘de race’, meaning thoroughbred. 24 A Bean-Stripe; also Apple Eating: real poem by Robert Browning, 1883, as obscure as its title! 27 Valoroso – King Valoroso is from Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring two little girls – the Leslies only had boys.
    [Show full text]
  • THE COLLECTED POEMS of HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John Northam
    1 THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John Northam 2 PREFACE With the exception of a relatively small number of pieces, Ibsen’s copious output as a poet has been little regarded, even in Norway. The English-reading public has been denied access to the whole corpus. That is regrettable, because in it can be traced interesting developments, in style, material and ideas related to the later prose works, and there are several poems, witty, moving, thought provoking, that are attractive in their own right. The earliest poems, written in Grimstad, where Ibsen worked as an assistant to the local apothecary, are what one would expect of a novice. Resignation, Doubt and Hope, Moonlight Voyage on the Sea are, as their titles suggest, exercises in the conventional, introverted melancholy of the unrecognised young poet. Moonlight Mood, To the Star express a yearning for the typically ethereal, unattainable beloved. In The Giant Oak and To Hungary Ibsen exhorts Norway and Hungary to resist the actual and immediate threat of Prussian aggression, but does so in the entirely conventional imagery of the heroic Viking past. From early on, however, signs begin to appear of a more personal and immediate engagement with real life. There is, for instance, a telling juxtaposition of two poems, each of them inspired by a female visitation. It is Over is undeviatingly an exercise in romantic glamour: the poet, wandering by moonlight mid the ruins of a great palace, is visited by the wraith of the noble lady once its occupant; whereupon the ruins are restored to their old splendour.
    [Show full text]
  • PROMETHEUS I Feel the Wings of the Eagle Stretch Wide the Lips of My Liver
    PROMETHEUS I feel the wings of the eagle Stretch wide the lips of my liver; I feel its talons, I feel its iron beak, I feel the enormity of its hunger for life, Its thirst for flight With me in its talons. And I fly. Whoever said I was chained? MARIN SORESCU (1936—1996) LEDA Come not with kisses Not with caresses Of hands and lips and murmurings; Come with the hiss of wings And sea-touch tip of a beak And treading of wet, webbed, wave-working feet Into the marsh-soft belly. D.H. LAWRENCE (1885—1930) A HYMN TO BACCHUS Bacchus, let me drink no more! Wild are seas that want a shore! When our drinking has no stint, There is no one pleasure in't. I have drank up for to please Thee, that great cup, Hercules. Urge no more; and there shall be Daffadils giv'n up to thee. ROBERT HERRICK (1591—1674) LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883—1963) ARGUS When wise Ulysses, from his native coast Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss'd, Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone, To all his friends, and ev'n his Queen unknown, Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares, Furrow'd his rev'rend face, and white his hairs, In his own palace forc'd to ask his bread, Scorn'd by those slaves his former bounty fed, Forgot of all his own domestic crew, The faithful Dog alone his rightful master knew! Unfed, unhous'd, neglected, on the clay Like an old servant now cashier'd, he lay; Touch'd with resentment of ungrateful man, And longing to behold his ancient lord again.
    [Show full text]
  • List of Recordings for Poetry Screen 2021
    Poetry Screen Project [email protected] List of Recordings for Poetry Screen 2021 As part of the Poetry Screen project we are able to supply audio recordings of the following poems for you to work with. In order to access this files as MP3s to work with in your video production, please email [email protected] and let us know which files you require for your project. CHILDREN’S POETRY Poet Poem (use the link to preview the recording) Laura Mucha Wanted: Wizard's Assistant | Children's Poetry Archive Laura Mucha I'm an Orchestra | Children's Poetry Archive Laura Mucha Night Flight | Children's Poetry Archive Laura Mucha The Land of Blue | Children's Poetry Archive Laura Mucha Travel By Book | Children's Poetry Archive Laura Mucha Words That Make Me Smile | Children's Poetry Archive CLASSIC POETRY Poet Poem (use the link to preview the recording) Matthew Arnold Sohrab and Rustum, ll. 857–end - Poetry Archive Matthew Arnold Dover Beach - Poetry Archive Matthew Arnold Dover Beach - Poetry Archive Anna Laetitia Barbauld The Rights of Woman - Poetry Archive Anna Laetitia Barbauld To the Poor - Poetry Archive William Blake The Sick Rose - Poetry Archive William Blake The Tyger - Poetry Archive William Blake The Chimney Sweeper: 'When my mother died I was very young' - Poetry Archive William Blake London - Poetry Archive Anne Bradstreet Verses Upon the Burning of Our House - Poetry Archive Anne Bradstreet Upon a Fit of Sickness - Poetry Archive Anne Bradstreet To My Dear and Living Husband - Poetry Archive Emily Bronté Remembrance - Poetry Archive Emily Bronté No Coward Soul Is Mine - Poetry Archive Elizabeth Barrett Browning How do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) - Poetry Archive Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnets From The Portuguese XXIV - Poetry Archive Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese XXXVI - Poetry Archive Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Musical Instrument - Poetry Archive Poetry Screen is a project to inspire video poetry, run in partnership with the Poetry Archive and supported by Arts Council England.
    [Show full text]
  • Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature Volume Ix, 2017
    Ad Alta: The Birmingham Journal of Literature Volume IX, 2017 AD ALTA: THE BIRMINGHAM JOURNAL OF LITERATURE VOLUME IX 2017 Cover image taken from ‘Axiom’ by WILLIAM BATEMAN Printed by Central Print, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK This issue is available online at: www.birmingham.ac.uk/adalta Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature (Print) ISSN 2517-6951 Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature (Online) ISSN 2517-696X © Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature Questions and Submissions: Joshua Allsop and Jessica Pirie ([email protected]) GENERAL EDITORS Joshua Allsop & Jessica Pirie EDITORIAL BOARD Tom White REVIEW PANEL Emily Buffey Maryam Asiad Ruth Caddick POETRY AND ARTS EDITORS Hannah Comer Katherine Hughes Polly Duxfield Slava Rudin Brianna Grantham Charles Green NOTES EDITOR Christian Kusi-Obodum Yasmine Baker Paula Lameau James McCrink BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR Aurora Faye Martinez Geoff Mills Antonia Wimbush PROOFS EDITOR Jack Queenan Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature wishes to acknowledge the hard work and generosity of a number of individuals, without whom this journal would never have made its way into your hands, or onto your computer screen. First, our editorial board Tom White and Emily Buffey should be thanked. Tom White, with tireless patience, was always available with invaluable advice and support throughout the entire process. Emily Buffey provided excellent feedback and commentary, sometimes at very short notice. Will Cooper of Central Print should also be thanked, without whose experience and expertise the publication of this journal would not have been possible. Also, our contributors, who dedicated so much precious time to writing and redrafting their submissions, and the section editors who guided and worked with them through that process.
    [Show full text]
  • Poetry – Year 8
    Poetry – Year 8 % I can … Prove it! Students are beginning to explore: 1) What 3 things does Simon Armitage want us to realise about the narrator in Hitcher? You must explore how the tone and rhythm of the language reveal his personality. Write a 5 paragraph How rhythm can create tone essay. You should aim to include the words: mundane, familiar, un-poetic, contrasting, emotionless, nouns, cliché, turning point and stress. How an awareness of context develops a deeper exploration 2) What 3 key ideas about the theme of love does Shakespeare develop in Sonnet 130? You must of the poem. explore how the context of traditional love poetry and the format of the Sonnet can help you to explain Shakepseare’s motivations. Write a 5 paragraph essay. You should aim to include the 80%+ words: form, volta, stereotype, superficial, imagery, extended metaphor, 1590s, Elizabethean ideas of beauty, turning point, humour, truth, couplet & climax. 3) Out of the Blue – Choose 1-3 sections from Out of the Blue and explore how Simon Armitage uses techniques to reveal his thoughts and feelings about 9/11. What is the most important idea he wants readers to understand? Which line do you consider most powerful or effective and why? How does the form of the poem represent the title “out of the blue”? Students are beginning to explore: 1) How does the narrator speak? Bitterly, violently, confidently or in a fragile way. Does it depend? Explore how Duffy uses other poetic techniques to create Havisham’s tone of voice. Write a 5 How Extended Metaphors can paragraph essay.
    [Show full text]
  • Unit -3 Shakespeare : W.H. and Dark Lady 3.1 Objectives : 3.2
    Unit -3 qqq Shakespeare : W.H. and Dark Lady Structure 3.1 Objectives 3.2 Shakespeare : Life and Works 3.3 Shakespeare’s Sonnets 3.4 The Text: W.H. 3.4.1 Sonnet I 3.4.2 Sonnet LV (55) 3.4.3 Sonnet CXVI (116) 3.4.4 Sonnet 126 3.5 The Text: Dark Lady 3.5.1 Sonnet CXXX (130) 3.5.2 Sonnet CXXXVIII (138) 3.6 Conclusion 3.7 Questions 3.8 Reference 3.1 qqq Objectives : I welcome you to this Unit but not without some hesitation. Some of you, 1 am afraid, may want to question the relevance as well as the utility of an introduction to William Shakespeare for, generally speaking, neither in your school nor in your college have you been too far away from the Bard of Avon. You could not have been. A student of English Literature cannot perhaps hope to graduate without reading Shakespeare because it will mean studying the human body and not learning about the heart and the circulatory system. Yet I feel that I should introduce or rather re-introduce Shakespeare to make you aware of certain facts/issues/controversies. 3.2 qqq Shakespeare : Life and Works From your study of Shakespeare at the undergraduate level, you know that a great deal 70 of mystery shrouds the poet-dramatist and his identity itself has been in question for many hundred years now. It has almost turned into a literary detective story, with enthusiasts trying to unveil the truth about a man known to have been born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23 April 1564 and baptized on the 26th.
    [Show full text]
  • Theodora Michaeliodu Laura Pence Jonathan Tweedy John Walsh
    Look, the world tempts our eye, And we would know it all! Setting is a basic characteristic of literature. Novels, short stories, classical Greece and medieval Europe and the literary traditions the temporal and spatial settings of individual literary works, one can dramas, film, and much poetry—especially narrative poetry—typically inspired by those periods. Major Victorian poets, including Tennyson, map and visualize the distribution of literary settings across historical We map the starry sky, have an identifiable setting in both time and space. Victorian poet the Brownings, Arnold, Rossetti, and Swinburne, provide a rich variety periods and geographic space; compare these data to other information, We mine this earthen ball, Matthew Arnold’s “Empedocles on Etna,” for instance, is set in Greek of representations of classical and medieval worlds. But what does the such as year of publication or composition; and visualize networks of We measure the sea-tides, we number the sea-sands; Sicily in the fifth century B.C. “Empedocles” was published in 1852. quantifiable literary data reveal about these phenomena? Of the total authors and works sharing common settings. The data set is a growing Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) is set in Ireland, Cornwall, number of published works or lines of verse from any given period, collection of work titles, dates, date ranges, and geographic identifiers We scrutinise the dates and Brittany, but in an uncertain legendary medieval chronology. or among a defined set of authors or texts, how many texts have and coordinates. Challenges include settings of imprecise, legendary, Of long-past human things, In the absence of a narrative setting, many poems are situated classical, medieval, biblical, or contemporary settings? How many texts and fictional time and place.
    [Show full text]