'Critical Introduction' Collected Works of Robert Browning, CSP, 2012. (original) (raw)
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Historiographical Poetics (MLQ, Spring 2016)
Contribution to MLQ special issue on Historical Poetics. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's imperfect rhymes, criticized since the nineteenth century, strangely resemble her blank verse. This essay argues that her experiments in poetic form should be viewed in relation to her reading and writing of literary history, particularly her intellectual engagement with the work of Henry Hallam. Barrett Browning's remarks in the margins of Hallam's books and in a historiographical essay of her own reveal a poet thinking about her craft in the context of a transnational history of poetry. Barrett Browning's idiosyncratic prosody becomes another means of writing literary history. (http://mlq.dukejournals.org)
European Journal of Literary Studies, ISSN 2601 - 971X https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLS/index ISSN-L 2601 - 971X, 2019
The Victorian poet, Robert Browning was mostly regarded as a great poet of love and an innovator of the dramatic monologue. He was also equally popularly the best-known for his philosophy of optimism, and the philosophy of the Imperfect. But few have looked at Browning's philosophy of pain, suffering, and evil revealed in his poetry. A humble attempt has been made in this article to explore the common subjects, themes and treatment of pain, suffering, and evil in the poetry of Robert Browning to which a precise and careful evaluative investigation have been assessed by a gone through his some poems abounded with multiple and manifold notions and speeches of speakers, lofty subject-matters, ejaculated diction, presentation, contemporary common psychoanalytical issues and cultural appearance, philosophy of the grand stories on the ground of common subjects and objects, selection of the private and common symbols, perfect imaginary, viewpoint and the perfect creation of characterizations. Issue: https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLS/issue/view/13 Abstract: https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLS/article/view/95 Article: https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLS/article/view/95/125
Gal Manor * ROBERT BROWNING'S POETICS OF RESURRECTION IN 'TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS'
Resurrection is a recurring metaphor for poetry in Robert Browning's poems, plays and correspondence. Yet his attitude towards this trope is a conflicted one, as Browning often associates resurrection with an objectionable sacrilegious quest as well as with popular forms of Victorian magic, such as spiritualism and mesmerism, which he abhorred. In spite of this seeming rejection of magic, Browning's attitude towards magicians and magic language is also characterized by fascination and attraction, triggered by the occult books he read in his father's large and eccentric library. As a result, magicians and mystical theories often appear in his work, from his first published work, " Pauline " (1833), to his last publication, Asolando (1889). One example of the importance of magic to Browning's poetics of resurrection is the poem ''Transcendentalism' : A Poem in Twelve Books' (1855), in which Browning conjures up a dead magician so as to compare 'musty volumes' of ineffectual prose with resuscitative poetry inspired by Jacob Boehme's mystical notions of language. Indeed, Browning's dramatic monologues in Men and Women (1855) aim to emulate the resurrecting 'brace of rhymes' uttered by the mage in 'Transcendentalism' so as to galvanise his poetry and gain popular recognition after years of derision and indifference to his work.