Assignment 4 : General Characteristics of Browning's Poems : 22395 Paper 104 : Literature of the Victorians

 Introduction : Robert Browning, along with Lord Alfred Tennyson, stands in delegation of the Victorian age in the history of the English Literature. He is one of the difficult poets to be classified and understood as well. Though one of several Victorian poets whose legacies have endured, Robert Browning is arguably the hardest of his contemporaries to classify. His work equally reflects his remarkable intellectualism, his interest in grotesqueness, and his refusal to espouse any consistent worldview. These disparate elements make it difficult to categorize his oeuvre under any simple classification. Browning did not find much popular success until later in his life, largely because the public either found his work obscure and difficult, or because they considered imperfect some of the very qualities that are now lauded. Examples of these elements are irregular rhyme schemes, contradictory characters, and imprecision about character motives. Perhaps this lack of success has proven a boon to Browning's legacy, however, since it allowed him to continue to follow his own eccentricities without the pressure of having to subscribe to popular taste, thereby creating work now appreciated for its uniqueness.

Browning is perhaps most famous for his use of the dramatic monologue, a poem written from the point of view of someone who has dramatic imperative to argue for him or herself. This form fits Browning's interests perfectly, since it allows him to empathize with perspectives he likely did not hold himself, thereby considering myriad human perspectives, and to investigate the remarkable human facility for rationalizing our behaviors and beliefs.

Much of his poetry, however, has a deliberately philosophical edge. Again, Browning believed that humans are constantly changing, their attitudes subject to shifts day-by-day or hour-by-hour. However, by using the dramatic monologue, he was able to explore a philosophy in the moment, and some of his work, like "Death in the Desert" or "Rabbi Ben Ezra," is as much defined by a statement of belief as by any dramatic situation. Even some of the more dramatic poems are difficult to comprehend if the reader is not ready to engage in questions of existence, time, memory, or love.

Overall, what one can take from Browning's work is that the poet himself lived according to one of his more prevalent themes: the quest. A mercurial and intellectually adventurous man who sought to document his ever-changing attitudes and beliefs into art, Robert Browning saw the human struggle as a noble quest towards an impossible goal of perfection, and luckily thought to immortalize that struggle as best he could.

(Source : Gradesaver)

The Eagle-eye Overview of Browning's Life :

Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough of Southwark in south London. He was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation, but due to a slave revolt there, had returned. Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, Scotland, and his Scottish wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family to have a mixed-race ancestry including some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian rather than Jamaican. The evidence is inconclusive. Robert's father, a literary collector, amassed a library of some 6,000 books, many of them rare so that Robert grew up in a household with significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after the death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts.

(Source : Wikipedia)

Chief Characteristics of Browning's Poems :

(1) Death :

Much of Browning's work contemplates death and the way that it frames our life choices. Many poems consider the impending nature of death as a melancholy context to balance the joy of life. Examples are "Love Among the Ruins" and "A Toccata of Galuppi's." Other poems find strength in the acceptance of death, like "Prospice," "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and "Rabbi Ben Ezra." Some poems – like "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Caliban upon Setebos," or "The Laboratory" – simply consider death as an ever-present punishment.

(2) Truth/Subjectivity :

If any prevailing philosophy can be found throughout all of Browning's poetry, it is that humans are not composed of fixed perspective, but instead are full of contradiction and are always changing. Therefore, a wise man acknowledges that every person sees the world differently not only from other people but even from himself as his life changes. Many of the dramatic monologues make this implicit argument, by suggesting the remarkable human facility to rationalize our behavior and attitudes. Consider "My Last Duchess" or "Porphyria's Lover." Even those who believe that there is a truth to be discovered, like Rabbi Ben Ezra or St. John, acknowledge that each man must get to it in his own way and through his own journey.

(3) Delusion :

Perhaps Browning's most effectively used literary device is dramatic irony, in which the audience or reader is aware of something of which the speaker is not aware. Most often, what this dramatic irony reveals is that the speaker is deluded or does not quite realize the truth of something. Some poems feature a demented character who is not aware of the extent of his or her depravity or insanity. Examples are "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Caliban upon Setebos" and "The Laboratory." Other poems feature a character whose reasons for behavior are not as clear-cut as he or she believes. Consider "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" or "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church." Finally, one can observe manifestations of this in less obvious ways through poems like "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "A Death in the Desert" and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." In these cases, the narrators are not clearly insane or demented, but are so fixed in their own perspectives that they are unable to appreciate why they are being punished or oppressed.

(4) Beauty :

Though Browning's work typically eschews the Romantic poetry that was once his greatest influence, he does continue to contemplate the nature and limits of beauty through his poetry. Some of his poems take beauty or love as their primary subject: "Meeting at Night," "My Star," "Two in the Campagna," or "Life in a Love." Of course, even these poems always contemplate the theme through the lens of an individual's unique perspective. Others see absent beauty as a cause for melancholy. Consider "Home-Thoughts, From Abroad," "Love Among the Ruins," and "Evelyn Hope." Even some of the more sophisticated monologues consider beauty and the pursuit of it as something that can torment us. Examples are "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," and "A Death in the Desert."

(5) The Quest :

A theme that runs through much of Browning's poetry is that life is composed of a quest that the brave man commits to, even when the goal is unclear or victory unlikely. In some poems, this quest is literal, particularly in "Childe Roland to Dark Tower Came." This is a useful poem for considering the use of the quest in other poems. Some of them use the metaphor to suggest the difficulties of living in the face of inevitable death: "Prospice," "Two in the Campagna," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "Life in a Love." Others have less intense quests than that which Roland undertakes, but nevertheless show Browning's interest in the theme: "Meeting at Night," "How They Brought the Good News From Ghent to Aix," and "A Grammarian's Funeral." Overall, the theme serves as a metaphor for life and most poems can be understood through the lens of "Childe Roland" in this way.

(6) Religion :

Through Browning never proposes a fixed religious perspective or subscribes to any organized religion, much of his poetry contemplates the nature or limits of religion. Most often, he casts doubt on the structure and hypocrisy of organized religion. Consider "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," and "Fra Lippo Lippi." However, Browning often creates characters whose religious sense is a strong part of their personality. In all of these cases, of course, each individual has his own unique take on religion. Examples are "A Death in the Desert," "Caliban Upon Setebos," and "Rabbi Ben Ezra." Finally, much of Browning's poetry can be interpreted through its lack of a religious sense, a world that has death and an afterlife but eschews any relation to a God. This happens in some of the grander poems like "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" or in the more personal ones like "Prospice."

(7) The Grotesque :

One of the elements in Browning's poetry that made him unique in his time and continues to resonate is his embrace of the grotesque as a subject worthy of poetic explanation. Most often, he explores the grotesque nature of human behavior and depravity. Consider "Porphyria's Lover," "Evelyn Hope," and "The Laboratory." Then there are examples like "Caliban upon Setebos," where the character is easy to sympathize with while being objectively a grotesque creature. And then there is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," which plunges head-first into a grotesque landscape.

Conclusion : Poems by Browning reflected the hypocrisy and suppressive nature of religion and society of Victorian Era, the century of machines and utilitarianism. Being a prolific poet, he dealt with various themes by producing the major poetries especially in Blank Verse.

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Reference :

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