DOCSLIB.ORG

A Poet's Self-Observation: Robert Browning's Poems in Propria Persona

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Poet's Self-Observation: Robert Browning's Poems in Propria Persona U n iv e r sit y Co l l e g e L o n d o n U n iv e r s it y o f L o n d o n A P o e t ’s S e l f -O b s e r v a t io n : Robert Browning’s Poems i n p r o p r i a p e r s o n a BY B r it t a M a r t e n s A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND HUMANITIES FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY LONDON 2002 ProQuest Number: U643225 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643225 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Ab str a c t Robert Browning’s poemsin propria persona are usually considered as giving access to his poetics and private self. The contention of this thesis is that many of these poems do not seriously disclose the poet’s personality but partially subvert the reliability of their speaker. Three hypotheses are posited. Firstly, as in the dramatic monologue, there is a distance between the implied author and the speaker, which allows the reader more critically to observe how the speaker ‘Browning’ conceptualises his self and his world. To analyse this differentiation, the thesis draws on a critical approach which combines Antony Easthope’s distinction ofenounced and enunciation and Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theory ofsecond order observation. Secondly, Browning’s self­ portrayal is shown often to be the opportunity for a critical scrutiny of the way the public perceives him and evaluates poetry in general. The poems thus incite the reader to an observation of his own aesthetic criteria which parallels the poet’s reflections on the poetic medium. Thirdly, discussing poetics within the literary text is seen to be Browning’s contribution to the self-generating autonomy of the modem art system as Luhmann defines it. The poems which undermine the statements of the speaker are related to Romantic Irony, which is a prime indicator of the transition to a modem concept of literature. The thesis undertakes critical readings of those poems in propria persona which focus on Browning’s identity as a poet with an emphasis on the various techniques he employs in presenting himself. Chapters cover his self-definition in relation to the self- expressive poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poems in which he presents himself as the object of observation by others, poems responding directly to his critics, his self­ presentation as the narrator in the narrative poems, and his dialectical self-definition in relation to other poets or poetic concepts. The poems emerge as documents of Browning’s hesitant transition towards a modem concept of poetry as independent of extra-literary functions and of the poet’s personality. C o n t e n t s Acknowledgements 5 A Note on Texts 6 Short Titles 7 List of Illustrations 8 I. Introduction 9 1.1. The Notion of Second Order Observation in Systems Theory 10 1.2. The Dramatic Monologue as a Literary Manifestation of Modernity 15 1.3. Romantic Irony as another Indicator of Modernity 17 1.4. Browning’s Poemsin propria persona 18 II. Self-Definition in Relation to Elizabeth Barrett Browning 26 II. 1 .‘The Guardian-Angel’ 29 11.2. ‘Old Pictures in Florence’ 36 H.3. ‘One Word More’ 43 11.4. O lyric Love...’ {The Ring and the Book) 52 11.5. ‘Amphibian’ (Prologue to Fifine at the Fair) 54 11.6. ‘To Edward FitzGerald’ 58 III. Self-Observation as Hetero-Observation 62 III. 1. The Fictionalisation of Personal Experience 62 111.2. Fictional Characters Observing Browning 71 111.3. Browning as Observer 76 IV. The Confrontation with the Critics and the Public 81 IV. 1. The Dialogic Set-Up as Cultural Critique 87 IV.2. The Appropriation of Voice 90 IV.3. The Second Order Observation of the Public, the Art Market and Popular Poetry 95 IV.4. Browning’s Self-Conceptualisation 106 IV.5. Alternatives: Showing instead of Telling in ‘Popularity’ and Romantic Irony in the ‘Prologue’ toFerishtah’s Fancies 114 IV.6. The Use of Prefaces, Prologues and Epilogues 120 V. Browning as Narrator 126 V .l. Sordello 128 V.1.1. Self-Observation through Hetero-Observation: Sordello and Eglamor 135 V. 1.2. Blind Spots in the Narrator’s Observation of His Narration 140 v.l.3. The Observation of the Narrator’s Self in Process 145 V.1.4. The Narrator’s Self-Definition in Relation to the Audience and the Creation of the Active Reader 148 V.l.5. An Autobiographical Episode: The Venice Digression 162 V. 1.6. A First Step towards Functional Differentiation 175 V.2. The Ring and the Book 176 V.2.1. The Poet as First Order Observer of the Story 179 V.2.1.1. The Realist Claim to Historical Accuracy 179 V.2.1.2. The Poet’s Biased Observation of the Story 182 V.2.1.3. Literary Patterns in the Observation of the Story 187 V.2.2. The Second Order Observation of the Poem’s Genesis 191 V.2.2.1. The Ring Metaphor 191 V.2.2.2. The Resuscitation Metaphor 197 V.2.2.3. Oscillations Between Objectivity and Subjectivity 200 V.2.3. General Poetics 203 V.2.3.1. Multiperspectivism and Relativism 204 V.2.3.2. The Intransparency of Language and the Epistemological Function of Art 207 V.2.4. The Third Order Observation: The Stance of the Implied Author 212 V.2.4.1. Which Truth Does Art Tell? 213 V.2.4.2. Romantic Irony 215 V.2.5. The Apex of Browning’s Modernity 218 V.3. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country 219 V.3.1. The Critical Observation of the Narrator’s Realist-Naturalist 222 Method V.3.2. The Epilogue 234 V.4. La Saisiaz 237 V.4.1. Self-Definition in Relation to Literary and Intellectual Predecessors 240 V.4.2. The Epilogue 245 VI. Self-Observation through Juxtaposition With Other Poets 250 VI. 1. Self-Definition as an Objective Poet in Relation to Shelley: ‘Memorabilia’ and ‘Cenciaja’ 252 VI.2. The Confrontation With the Ideal of the Poet as Singer 260 VII. Conclusion; Browning as a Transitional Figure 279 Works Cited 284 A cknowledgements Part of Chapter V.1.4 of this thesis appeared in Notes and Queries, and Chapter V.2 is a revised version of sections from my MA thesis (see Works Cited). I thank Dr. Main Rennie for the permission to quote from her unpublished doctoral dissertation and the Armstrong Browning Library in Waco, Texas, for the permission to reproduce their copy of Guercino’sAngelo Custode. This project would not have been possible without the financial support I received from the University College London Graduate School, the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the German Academic Exchange Service. I wish to thank my enthusiastic supervisor Professor Danny Karlin for many inspiring comments and an endless supply of quotations and cross-references to corroborate my points. I am indebted to Professor Peter Hiihn for kindling my interest in Browning and inspiring the theoretical approach of this thesis. Many thanks also to my subsidiary supervisor Professor Rosemary Ashton for reading my manuscript, to Dr. Scott Lewis for locating two quotations, to John Montgomery and Gustavo Seijo for help with the illustration and to Julia Kiihn for fruitful discussions and her patient proofreading. I am very grateful to my parents for their loving support throughout my studies. Thanks for everything to Jim Shields, to whom this thesis is dedicated with love. A No te on T ex ts Three major critical editions of Browning’s work by Ohio University Press, Oxford University Press and Longman are still in progress. Only the much shorter two-volume Penguin edition covers all of his poetical works, with the exception of the translation of the Agamemnon (1877). This edition is defective both in what it includes among Browning’s unpublished or uncollected poems and in what it omits, e.g. it mistakenly ascribes poems by EBB to Browning and vice versa. In order to be able to trace the chronological development of Browning’s self­ conceptualisation, I would have liked to use as my primary reference his works as they appear in their first editions. In the absence of a complete critical edition of all first editions and in view of the fact that Browning’s textual revisions of works written after his marriage in 1846 are not as extensive or substantial as those written before, I have adopted the following policy: references to these early works, which underwent considerable revisions, are to the first editions, as collected in the first two volumes of the Longman edition by John Woolford and Daniel Karlin; references to the works from Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day onwards are to the 1888-89 edition, which the other three critical editions use as their copy text. As the number and type of revisions in the later works are relatively insignificant, the final versions of these texts are in general also representative of Browning’s aesthetics at the moment of composition.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature
    A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature Robert A. Taylor RESEARCH IN MEDIEVAL CULTURE Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature Medieval Institute Publications is a program of The Medieval Institute, College of Arts and Sciences Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature Robert A. Taylor MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS Western Michigan University Kalamazoo Copyright © 2015 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Robert A. (Robert Allen), 1937- Bibliographical guide to the study of the troubadours and old Occitan literature / Robert A. Taylor. pages cm Includes index. Summary: "This volume provides offers an annotated listing of over two thousand recent books and articles that treat all categories of Occitan literature from the earli- est enigmatic texts to the works of Jordi de Sant Jordi, an Occitano-Catalan poet who died young in 1424. The works chosen for inclusion are intended to provide a rational introduction to the many thousands of studies that have appeared over the last thirty-five years. The listings provide descriptive comments about each contri- bution, with occasional remarks on striking or controversial content and numerous cross-references to identify complementary studies or differing opinions" -- Pro- vided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-58044-207-7 (Paperback : alk. paper) 1. Provençal literature--Bibliography. 2. Occitan literature--Bibliography. 3. Troubadours--Bibliography. 4. Civilization, Medieval, in literature--Bibliography.
    [Show full text]
  • The Armstrong Browning Library Newsletter God Is the Perfect Poet
    The Armstrong Browning Library Newsletter God is the perfect poet. – Paracelsus by Robert Browning NUMBER 51 SPRING/SUMMER 2007 WACO, TEXAS Ann Miller to be Honored at ABL For more than half a century, the find inspiration. She wrote to her sister late Professor Ann Vardaman Miller of spending most of the summer there was connected to Baylor’s English in the “monastery like an eagle’s nest Department—first as a student (she . in the midst of mountains, rocks, earned a B.A. in 1949, serving as an precipices, waterfalls, drifts of snow, assistant to Dr. A. J. Armstrong, and a and magnificent chestnut forests.” master’s in 1951) and eventually as a Master Teacher of English herself. So Getting to Vallombrosa was not it is fitting that a former student has easy. First, the Brownings had to stepped forward to provide a tribute obtain permission for the visit from to the legendary Miller in Armstrong the Archbishop of Florence and the Browning Library, the location of her Abbot-General. Then, the trip itself first campus office. was arduous—it involved sitting in a wine basket while being dragged up the An anonymous donor has begun the cliffs by oxen. At the top, the scenery process of dedicating a stained glass was all the Brownings had dreamed window in the Cox Reception Hall, on of, but disappointment awaited Barrett the ground floor of the library, to Miller. Browning. The monks of the monastery The Vallombrosa Window in ABL’s Cox Reception The hall is already home to five windows, could not be persuaded to allow a woman Hall will be dedicated to the late Ann Miller, a Baylor professor and former student of Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Zea E-Books Zea E-Books 12-1-2019 British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century Beverley Rilett University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Rilett, Beverley, "British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century" (2019). Zea E-Books. 81. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/81 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Zea E-Books at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Zea E-Books by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century A Selection for College Students Edited by Beverley Park Rilett, PhD. CHARLOTTE SMITH WILLIAM BLAKE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE GEORGE GORDON BYRON PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY JOHN KEATS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ALFRED TENNYSON ROBERT BROWNING EMILY BRONTË GEORGE ELIOT MATTHEW ARNOLD GEORGE MEREDITH DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI CHRISTINA ROSSETTI OSCAR WILDE MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE ZEA BOOKS LINCOLN, NEBRASKA ISBN 978-1-60962-163-6 DOI 10.32873/UNL.DC.ZEA.1096 British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century A Selection for College Students Edited by Beverley Park Rilett, PhD. University of Nebraska —Lincoln Zea Books Lincoln, Nebraska Collection, notes, preface, and biographical sketches copyright © 2017 by Beverly Park Rilett. All poetry and images reproduced in this volume are in the public domain. ISBN: 978-1-60962-163-6 doi 10.32873/unl.dc.zea.1096 Cover image: The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, 1888 Zea Books are published by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries.
    [Show full text]
  • Tony Roberts
    Tony Roberts Living with Browning: an appreciation of the poet in his bicentennial year I sometimes feel that Robert Browning and I were related, distant cousins perhaps. It stems from the ghostly intimacy of having read nine biographies of the man. His poetry and the books that feed on it have taken up five feet of my bookshelves for many years. Of course I frequently reread the poems, too, and quote Randall Jarrell in my defence. Celebrating Wallace Stevens’ work, in Poetry and the Age , Jarrell concluded: A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great. By that measure Robert Browning is a great poet. On my count there are a dozen or more lightning strikes among the thicket of collections written by this most relentless of Victorians i. What I have loved of Browning is the plain speaking, “hip to haunch”, intimacy of the dramas. We are there with the watch seizing “brother Lippo”; at dinner with the worldly prelate, Bishop Blougram; gathered with the sons at the deathbed of the bishop of Saint Praxed’s; attending on the dry, sadistic duke at Ferrara; eavesdropping on the cuckolded “faultless painter”. Here and elsewhere, Browning exhibits his genius for character and atmosphere – and for fine detail (“the ferrel of his stick/Trying the mortar’s temper ‘tween the chinks”), the perfect image ii , sensuality (upper iii and lower caste iv ), the memorable aphorism (“incentives come from the soul's self;/ The rest avail not.”) adroit rhythms and rhymes and – in lighter moments – a sometimes knockabout sense of humour v.
    [Show full text]
  • Essays on British Women Poets B Studi Di Letterature Moderne E Comparate Collana Diretta Da Claudia Corti E Arnaldo Pizzorusso 15
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Florence Research ESSAYS ON BRITISH WOMEN POETS B STUDI DI LETTERATURE MODERNE E COMPARATE COLLANA DIRETTA DA CLAUDIA CORTI E ARNALDO PIZZORUSSO 15 SUSAN PAYNE ESSAYS ON BRITISH WOMEN POETS © Copyright 2006 by Pacini Editore SpA ISBN 88-7781-771-2 Pubblicato con un contributo dai Fondi Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti e dello Spettacolo di Firenze Fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun volume/fascicolo di periodico dietro pagamento alla SIAE del compenso previsto dall’art. 68, comma 4, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633 ovvero dall’accordo stipulato tra SIAE, AIE, SNS e CNA, CONFARTIGIANATO, CASA, CLAAI, CONFCOMMERCIO, CONFESERCENTI il 18 dicembre 2000. Le riproduzioni per uso differente da quello personale potranno avvenire solo a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata dagli aventi diritto/dall’editore. to Jen B CONTENTS Introduction . pag. 7 Renaissance Women Poets and the Sonnet Tradition in England and Italy: Mary Wroth, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Franco. » 11 The Poet and the Muse: Isabella Lickbarrow and Lakeland Romantic Poetry . » 35 “Stone Walls do not a Prison Make”: Two Poems by Alfred Tennyson and Emily Brontë . » 59 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Search for a Poetic Identity . » 77 “Love or Rhyme”: Wendy Cope and the Lightness of Thoughtfulness . » 99 Bibliography. » 121 Index. » 127 B INTRODUCTION 1. These five essays are the result of a series of coincidences rather than a carefully thought out plan of action, but, as is the case with many apparently haphazard choices, they reflect an ongoing interest which has lasted for the past ten years.
    [Show full text]
  • Title: the Disclosure of Self in Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues
    Title: The Disclosure of self in Robert Browning's dramatic monologues Author: Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech Adamowicz-Pośpiech Agnieszka. (2014). The Disclosure of Citation style: self in Robert Browning's dramatic monologues. W: W. Kalaga, M. Mazurek, M. Sarnek (red.) "Camouflage : secrecy and exposure in literary and cultural studies" (S. 112-126). Katowice : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech The Disclosure of Self in Robert Browning’s Dramatic Monologues “To read poems,” wrote George Eliot in a review of Browning’s work, “is often a substitute for thought; fine-sounding conventional phrases and the sing-song of verse demand no co-operation in the reader; they glide over the mind.”1 Contrary to Eliot’s assessment, the aim of this paper is to show that by creating a disturbing persona characterized by a fluctuating self-consciousness which was distinctive not only of the fictional character but also of the listener/reader and the writer, Browning hampers uninvolved reading. In his dramatic monologues, the poet employs certain techniques to hide the real nature of his monologists, and the reader is forced painstakingly to gather the dispersed allusions, implications and insinuations so as to uncover the secrets of the speakers. Doubleness in Victorian poetry has been perceived by some critics as one of its defining characteristics.2 Amongst the terms coined to describe it is E.D.H. Johnson’s “dark companion”: “The expressed content [of a poem] has a dark companion, its imaginative counterpart, which accompanies and comments on apparent meaning in such a way as to suggest ulterior motives.”3 Isobel Armstrong proposed a parallel concept “double companion.”4 However, the essential words, seem to me, to be the “imaginative counterpart” – since it is only in the imagination of the reader that the counterpart may arise on condition that the reader becomes involved in unraveling the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Women and Nationalistic Politics in Robert Browning’S Poetry: a Feminist Reading of ‘’Balaustion’S Adventure and ‘’Aristophanes Apology
    International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN (P): 2249-6912; ISSN (E): 2249-8028 Vol. 7, Issue 4, Aug 2017, 43-64 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd WOMEN AND NATIONALISTIC POLITICS IN ROBERT BROWNING’S POETRY: A FEMINIST READING OF ‘’BALAUSTION’S ADVENTURE AND ‘’ARISTOPHANES APOLOGY IGNATIUS NSAIDZEDZE Department of English, Faculty of Arts the University of Buea, South West Region, America ABSTRACT Using the feminist critical theory, this paper analyses two epic poems by Robert Browning telling the story of a 14 year old girl from Rhodes, an ally of Athens who was using Euripides as her idol and his tragedy as her weapon liberates Athens from Spartan occupation with its foreign comedy of Aristophanes.Balaustion here is similar to Saint Joan in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan who liberates the French nation from the English occupation.The paper argues that Balaustion portrays herself as a ‘’New-Woman’’ when she exhibits masculine attributes like Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, her patriotism/nationalism and her quest for her people’s freedom when she liberates Athens from Spartan occupation.This paper reveals that by portraying such an active, nationalistic, man-like woman, Browning simply was paying tribute to his dead wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning who had died earlier.The story of King Admetos and his wife Alcestis paralleled that of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Browning and his wife were fervent admirers of the youngest of the three Greek tragedians Euripides and these two epics equally show Euripides’ importance as a nationalist tragedian in the ancient Greek world coming after Aeschylus and Sophocles.
    [Show full text]
  • University Microfilms, a XERQ\Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
    72- 19,021 NAPRAVNIK, Charles Joseph, 1936- CONVENTIONAL AND CREATED IMAGERY IN THE LOVE POEMS OF ROBERT BROWNING. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D. , 1972 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, A XERQ\Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan (^Copyrighted by Charles Joseph Napravnlk 1972 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE UNIVERSITY OF OKIAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE CONVENTIONAL AND CREATED IMAGERY IN THE LOVE POEMS OP ROBERT BROWNING A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY CHARLES JOSEPH NAPRAVNIK Norman, Oklahoma 1972 CONVENTIONAL AND CREATED IMAGERY IN THE LOVE POEMS OF ROBERT BROWNING PROVED DISSERTATION COMMITTEE PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 II. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE.................. 10 III, THE RING, THE CIRCLE, AND IMAGES OF UNITY..................................... 23 IV. IMAGES OF FLOWERS, INSECTS, AND ROSES..................................... 53 V. THE GARDEN IMAGE......................... ?8 VI. THE LANDSCAPE OF LOVE....... .. ...... 105 FOOTNOTES........................................ 126 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............. ...................... 137 iii CONVENTIONAL AND CREATED IMAGERY IN THE LOVE POEMS OP ROBERT BROWNING CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Since the founding of The Browning Society in London in 1881, eight years before the poet*a death, the poetry of Robert
    [Show full text]
  • To the EDITOR of the CLASSICAL REVIEW
    THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 61 then a few of the by-ways. Mr. Browning ling of Admetus's story, and Ixion (Jocoseria), used to know every inch of one highway with its conversion of the transgressor with all its associated by-ways, and never into a newer and more human Prometheus. set his foot on any other highway in the But also there is a word in Gerard de Loiresse same region. If he had been a zoologist, he {Parleyings) for those who might think that would have known all about lions and no- we must go back to myths for all our poetry. thing about tigers. Of course, this is no dis- Outlying stories that he found in his great paragement to his greatness. His true field researches are worked up in EcJietlos and was not learning but life. Only, why could Pfieidippides. He is still constant to the he not have read some Plato ? Our wistful Aeschylus of his youth, and especially to fancy cannot help framing some shadow of the PrometJieus, and to these he adds Pindar the transformed Republic and interpreted and Homer, quoting all three in Roman P/taedrus, for which we could have spared, letters in the midst of his verse. From perhaps, the refutation of Bubb Doding- Homer he is led to consider the ' Homeric ton and the divagations of the Famille question,' and uses it characteristically to Miranda. show forth in allegory the religious edu- Besides interpreting Greek tragedy, he cation of mankind (Asolando, Developments). translated it. The translations of the Alceslis In this period, for the first time in his life, (in Balaustion) and the Hercules Furens (in he begins to add Latin to Greek.
    [Show full text]
  • The Tomb of the Author in Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues
    Előd Pál Csirmaz The Tomb of the Author in Robert Browning’s Dramatic Monologues MA Thesis (for MA in English Language and Literature) Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary, 2006 Supervisor: Péter Dávidházi, Habil. Docent, DSc. Abstract Even after the death of the Author, its remains, its tomb appears to mark a text it cre- ated. Various readings and my analyses of Robert Browning’s six dramatic mono- logues, My Last Duchess, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church, Andrea del Sarto, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” Caliban upon Setebos and Rabbi Ben Ezra, suggest that it is not only possible to trace Authorial presence in dramatic monologues, where the Author is generally supposed to be hidden behind a mask, but often it even appears to be inevitable to consider an Authorial entity. This, while problematizes traditional anti-authorial arguments, do not entail the dreaded consequences of introducing an Author, as various functions of the Author and vari- ous Author-related entities are considered in isolation. This way, the domain of metanarrative-like Authorial control can be limited and the Author is turned from a threat into a useful tool in analyses. My readings are done with the help of notions and suggestions derived from two frameworks I introduce in the course of the argument. They not only help in tracing and investigating the Author and related entities, like the Inscriber or the Speaker, but they also provide an alternative description of the genre of the dramatic monologue. Előd P Csirmaz The Tomb of the Author ii Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 THE THEORY OF THE AUTHOR 1 2.1 A History of the Death of the Author 2 2.2 From the Methodological to the Ontological and Back: The Functions of the Author and its Death 3 A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Qualities of Browning
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Mid-West Quarterly, The (1913-1918) Mid-West Quarterly, The (1913-1918) 1914 The Qualities of Browning Harry T. Baker Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/midwestqtrly Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Baker, Harry T., "The Qualities of Browning" (1914). Mid-West Quarterly, The (1913-1918). 43. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/midwestqtrly/43 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mid-West Quarterly, The (1913-1918) at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mid-West Quarterly, The (1913-1918) by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in THE MID-WEST QUARTERLY 2:1 (October 1914), pp. 57-73. Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons & the University of Nebraska. THE QUALITIES OF BROWNING I The opening lines of Pippa Passes pulse with the tremendous vitality which the reader of Browning has early learned to expect of his poetry: "Day! Faster and more fast, O'er night's brim day boils at last: Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-.cup's brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay, For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world." Of this remarkable vital force the last poem from his pen, the Epilogue to Asolando, shows no diminution.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting Template
    THE IDEAL OF THE REAL: MID-VICTORIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ARTIST AND THE INVENTION OF REALISM By DANIEL SCHULTZ BROWN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Daniel Schultz Brown 2 To my advisor, Pamela Gilbert: for tireless patience, steadfast support and gentle guidance 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 6 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 11 History of Realism ................................................................................................... 14 Overview of Critical Literature ................................................................................. 21 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................... 34 2 “LESS EASILY DEFINED THAN APPREHENDED”: MID-VICTORAIN THEORIES OF REALISM ....................................................................................... 41 John Ruskin ............................................................................................................ 45 George Henry Lewes .............................................................................................
    [Show full text]