A Study of Metaphor and Irony in the Poetic of Robert Browning
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14IPICSIS AI4C PdiSK: A STUDY OF KZTPLP~IOKPJJD IROidY IIu' THE POETIC OF KOBCRT I3ROd:JIlJG by Evelyn Laurena Cook B. A., Simon Fraser University, 1971 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF TliE REQUIRCIEIJTS FOR Tfiz DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in tile Department of English @ EVELYN LAURENA COOK 1975 SIMON FKASER UNIVERSITY May 1975 All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in wilole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. Name: Degree: MASTER OF ARTS Title of Thesis : MZMESIS AND MASK: A STUDY OF METAPHOR AND IEiONY IN W POETIC OF FOBERT BFCXWING Examining Ccxranittee: Dr. J. R. Curtis Senior Supenrisor Prof. G. M. Newman Prof .' E. M. Lankert -- Dr. M. K. Goldberg Associate Professor Departmnt of Ihglish University of British Columbia c2 7' ate Zqpmved: Q -2 /4is / PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis or dissertation (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for -such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its 'own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of ~hesis/~issertation : mSIS AW -MASK: A STUDY OF rnAPHC)R ATm 1mNY m m PRETIC rlF Author : (signature) (name ) fC/ICGhJc j/lC (date) ABSTRACT Major Browning criticism from 1880 to the present focuses on the dramatic monologue either as a method of character revelation or as an oblique means of presenting the poet's religious or philosophic beliefs. Neither approach accounts for the consistent interweaving of metaphor and irony within the 2oems ; neither establishes a poetic which characterizes the dramatic monologue form. This thesis explores the major features which distinguish Robert Browning's I dramatic monologues and which embody metaphors that reveal the function of the artist and the nature of the creative act. Unlike most Browning criticism, the thesis examines the \ correspondence between metaphor and irony in an effort to delineate the dramatic significance of the play between speaker and context, man and "other ," creation and conception, life and art. All of Browning's dramatic monologues share ironic correlations between subject and object, but the selections discussed in this thesis are concerned with the nature of the creative act and thus provice a delineation of Browning's abiding concern for the relation between perception and ex- iii pression. Over the last hundred years these poems have received much critical attention ; but rarely have critics subjected the poems to close textual study in an effort to determine the ironic relation or balance between what the speaker says and the dramatic implications of his utterance. This thesis considers the context of each speech in order to relate this ironic balance to the metaphoric characteristics of the speaker's language and to the poem1s larger metaphoric implications. This study of the ironic features of the dramatic monologues reveals that the dramatic play is with the relation- ship between opposites and that the implications initiated by the speaker's speculations and statements are completed and redefined by the context of the speaker's situation. The gap between the potential meaning and the revealed one and between the actual experience and the ideal model - is sustained. However, the relationship is inverted as God beco&es man and the metaphors become actualized, The speech in a dramatic monologue is one-half of the poem's structure; the poem is completed by the ironic frame of the dramatic context, The critical methodology used throughout this thesis stresses the poetic, which defines the activity of the poem, rather than the character revelation inherent in each dramatic utterance. The speaker's mask is discovered to be a form of imitation which represents the ironic relationship between expression and experience. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to thank Dr. Jared Curtis for his personal availability and encouragement and the scnolarly care and consistent gener- osity which he offered to me througnout the preparation of this thesis and througnout my graduate studies. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE APPROVALPAGE. a 0 ii A3STRACT......................... iii ACKNOYLEDGEMENT. ..................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS. .................... vi CHAPTER I The Imagination of Imitation: "Caliban Upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island". 1 CilAPTER I1 "Abt Vogler" : The Dissipation of Soul. 53 CHAPTER I11 The ..Love Song of Andrea del Sarto ...... 106 CHAPTER IV Mirror and Metaphor: The Ring and the Book and "The, Ring and the Book" ..158 CONCLUSIOi\I ......................... 204 SELECTED BI3LIOGRAPIIY - Editions.. ................... 214 Criticism. ................... 215 Other 2orks Consulted. ............. 223 CHAPTER I The Imagination of Imitation : IfCaliban Upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Islandn It was imagination that wrought these forms, a more cunning artist than imitation. Imitation will make what it has seen, but imagination will make what it has not seen. Philostratus There is no way of conceiving or naming anything objective except after tne similitude of the subjective or of ourselves. Max Muller. The Science of Thought The following discussion offers, in part, an analysis of ~alibadsstyle--the characteristic, consistent and repetitious use he makes of the language. It also attempts to delineate from the structure of the poem, from Caliban's description of his world, what his usage indicates about his perceptions and con- ceptions, Because Calibanls discourse, as poem, is a dramatic monologue1 carrying its own setting or location, his description includes its context and together they provide a particular vision of reality, an artistic rendering and ordering that is the poem's subject matter as well as the poem's "message. " The paper lncludes two approaches : first, a textual consideration of what Caliban says (the verbal texture examined); and second, a commentary on the content of the "dramatic utterance," the 2 implication of location. I make no attempt to separate these approaches in my analysis in order to avoid moving into either character study or strictly philosophical considerations of 3 Browning's religious or aesthetic interests and appeals. Instead, I fuse the two. A central interest in the paper is how, if at all, Caliban's understanding differs from his description of the 4 cosmology. What is the nature of his mask or persona? (It should be made clear that in no way do I attempt to establish that Browning shares Calibants views or that Caliban is a voice for Browning. Such an attempt would, again, lead to character study or to autobiography; neither lies within the range of my interestb5 The effort of Browning students to match the poett s views with those of a character has led readers away from 6 7 the poem as Poem, as representation, as image 1. The mask8 has a two-fold function in that it is veil-like and refers to some- thing behind;' that is, it is dualistic or dialectic in nature, . as well as providing for the "shock of recognition." It is this aspect of experience, I the difference between description and depiction, the veil and the revealed, that Browning dramatizes. His poem is a measure of the gulf between perception and arti- . culation where Caliban' s understanding and his description are separated by his experience with the world. His interest is explication, his achievement a play, a verbal dance of simulta- neous reverence and mockery, an applauding of conditions and an attempt to overcome them. The poem becomes a dramatization of the creative process, how a texture is achieved, and in its process offers postulations and details concerning the why. The direction of this study is towards a consideration of metaphor as an aspect of style. Metaphor is relationship and "Caliban Upon Setebos" is structured by and concerned with the qualit17 and nature of relationships. liere the dramatized relationship between character and posture is a figuration of the relationship between creator and cmated. Metaphor operates as an articulation of tne unknown in terms of tne known, the unseea in terms of the seen, where the inner eye both irlforms and is inforxed by the outer. This is metaphor regresentins the circularity of experience , tile acting/acted-upon motif, where the sign and that signified are not merely analogically, linked--rather , the one creates the other. The explici-t/implicit quality of the poem is part of the actual/ ideal dichot orny throughout the Browning canon. 10 'dhat is considered and what is revealed, wha-t is revealed and wnat is potential,, are all part of tile 2oem's ground. Tne relationship between actual and ideal is parallel to the differ- ence between wnat is proposed arid what is attained. Thc vehicle or explicit of the metaphor (tne relationship) is the dramatic monologue form itself. Caliban's speech is i4OT the poem. The dramatic monologue is a structure in which subject/ 11 12 object and vehicle/tenor are circumscribed in a technique that describes a vision of the world by ironically rzflecting it from a prescriptivz, a self- justificatory explanation of- phenomena offered by its speaker, This character is made aware at some point in the process (if not at the onset) that ne is deceiving himself, or tnat he has been deceived uy the restric- tion of r~isprescribed speculation. I am suggesting that each of Browning's dramatic monologues is constructed not as one of 13 many possible windows on tne universe but as a depiction of the OUROBOROS-like nature of perception that is encoded in the structure of our language and that controls human expression.