Monday 27 November 2023

ASSIGNMENT : 104 Browning's Lyrical Tapestry: Unveiling Themes in Verse

104 Browning's Lyrical Tapestry: Unveiling Themes in Verse


Hello everyone This blog is part of an assignment for the paper 104 Literature of the Victorians Sem. 1, 2023.


# PERSONAL INFORMATION:-


NAME:- Hardi Vhora

BATCH:- M.A. Sem 1 (2023-2025)

ENROLLMENT NO:- 5108230032

PAPER NO. :- 104

PAPER NAME:- Literature of the Victorians

PAPER CODE:- 22395

e-mail:- hardivhora751@gmail.com

Roll Number:- 09


# TABLE OF CONTENT:-


  • Personal Information
  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • Introduction
  • Love and Passion
  • Psychological Exploration
  • Narrative Techniques
  • Religious and Spiritual Themes
  • Irony and Wit
  • Conclusion
  • References

# ABSTRACT:-

Browning's poetic repertoire encompasses a rich tapestry of themes, notably delving into love and passion with intricate storytelling. His exploration of the human psyche unfolds psychological landscapes, providing profound insights into emotions and motivations. Utilizing dramatic monologues and narrative techniques, Browning crafts a unique connection between readers and characters. Beyond the personal, his work extends to social commentary, reflecting on societal norms, values, and the human condition. The inclusion of religious and spiritual themes adds layers of depth,questioning existential aspects. Notably, Browning's verses carry a nuanced touch of irony and wit, prompting readers to engage in critical reflection while appreciating the subtle humor within his lyrical expressions.


# KEYWORDS:-

  • Browning
  • Human psyche 
  • Psychological landscapes, 
  • Motivations
  • Dramatic monologues
  • Irony
  • Wit
  •  Love 
  • Passion 
  • Emotions

# INTRODUCTION:-


Robert Browning, (born May 7, 1812, London—died Dec. 12, 1889, Venice), major English poet of the Victorian age, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue and psychological portraiture. His most noted work was The Ring and the Book (1868–69), the story of a Roman murder trial in 12 books.
The son of a clerk in the Bank of England in London, Browning received only a slight formal education, although his father gave him a grounding in Greek and Latin. In 1828 he attended classes at the University of London but left after half a session. Apart from a journey to St. Petersburg in 1834 with George de Benkhausen, the Russian consul general, and two short visits to Italy in 1838 and 1844, he lived with his parents in London until 1846, first at Camberwell and after 1840 at Hatcham. During this period (1832–46) he wrote his early long poems and most of his plays.
Browning’s first published work, Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833, anonymous), although formally a dramatic monologue, embodied many of his own adolescent passions and anxieties. Although it received some favourable comment, it was attacked by John Stuart Mill, who condemned the poet’s exposure and exploitation of his own emotions and his “intense and morbid self-consciousness.” It was perhaps Mill’s critique that determined Browning never to confess his own emotions again in his poetry but to write objectively. In 1835 he published Paracelsus and in 1840 Sordello, both poems dealing with men of great ability striving to reconcile the demands of their own personalities with those of the world. Paracelsus was well received, but Sordello, which made exacting demands on its reader’s knowledge, was almost universally declared incomprehensible.

# Notable Works:-

• “Bishop Blougram’s Apology” • “Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day”
 • “Dramatis Personae” 
• “Fra Lippo Lippi” 
• “Men and Women”
 • “My Last Duchess” 
• “Paracelsus”
 • “Pippa Passes”
 • “Rabbi Ben Ezra” 
• “Sordello”
 • “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church”
 • “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” • “The Ring and the Book”


# LOVE AND PASSION:-

Browning initiated composing love-poetry early in his career and continued to write it till his death. In ‘A Pearl’ and ‘By The fireside, ’ the poet expresses strong, earthly and sensuous love as well as spiritual love of the woman opening the infinite world of love for the lover. Browning does not write about obstacles or about ideals and generalizations, he deals with window-panes and gloves and garden walls-objects and places associated with the beloved or with a moment of love. Browning's love poems do not deal with love of truth or love of mankind or of one's motherland. His love is purely a passion which draws a man to a woman or woman to a man. Browning, in his love poems, does not describe the beauty of woman. There is a little bit of physical charm of a woman. He concentrates on the power which a woman can exert in her relationship with a man. So love is not an end in itself.It is a means towards the attainment of heavenly bliss. Browning has the unique distinction of being the only English poet who has dealt with love in all its multitudinous complexities; very wide is the variety of love situations taken up by the poet. Browning does not hesitate to describe love which convention disliked. He is also a poet of abnormal lovers and their love. Browning whole life achievement rests on his love which served him as a stepping stone to success and which ultimately became a mile-stone of his success in both the fields personal or literary. Browning's love-poems deal with the various phases and varieties of love in all classes of society. The present paper attempts to analyze love theme in Browning's poetry. It also throws light on his treatment of physical and spiritual love, his realism, the power of love, love situations and abnormal unconventional love.

# PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATION:-

Robert Browning (1812− 1889), one of the foremost Victorian poets, was a master of the dramatic monologue 1 and well-known for his startling subjects. As a result of his choice of themes that did not appeal to the general public, Browning’s poems were at first greeted with confusion and misunderstanding. Accordingly, Herbert Grierson and JC Smith (1962, 399) claim that in his own day Browning was underrated as a poet. At times he was even referred to as “Mrs Browning’s husband”, because his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning initially enjoyed greater success as a poet (Greenblatt et al. 2006, 2051). Despite the modest start of Browning’s literary career, he nonetheless managed to gain in popularity and respect. Browning became famous for his explorations of human psychology; he was particularly interested in exposing the deceitful ways in which our minds work as well as exploring the complexity of our motives (Greenblatt et al. 2006, 2054). Similarly, Thomas Blackburn (1967, 192) argues that Browning was more aware of the dark side of human nature than any other contemporary poet. Personally, I am most intrigued by Browning’s depictions of damaging love experiences which often include violence or even death. This interest has given rise to the topic of my thesis which deals with jealousy and possessiveness in three selected poems by Browning, namely “My Last Duchess”(1842),“Porphyria’s Lover”(1842) and “The Laboratory”(1844).

Although Browning’s fascination for psychological motifs has been recognised, there seems to be a shortage of in-depth research into his portrayal of jealousy and possessiveness. Consequently, the purpose of my thesis is to generate more knowledge of Browning’s poetry. The only study I found with a topic remotely related to my own is Wen-Lin Lan’s (2012) research into the concept of masculinity in Browning’s poems. In fact, previous studies have mostly concentrated on Browning’s production in its entirety instead of providing deep-going analyses on individual. 

# NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES:-

Browning is a master of the rhetoric of narration, but this has not been widely appreciated because so much critical emphasis has been placed on his dramatic and lyrical gifts. We need to incorporate into our view of him an added dimension: he told stories in many fresh and exciting ways; he performed a number of experiments in the narrative mode of his poetic laboratory. From 1833 until the year he died he was writing tales in verse that entertain and instruct in impressive ways. Narrative has been so little used by twentieth-century poets that a reminder is in order. Because practically every poem has some narrative elements, regardless of its mode-lyric, narrative, or dramatic-it is necessary to establish at the start what I mean by" narrative poetry." I use the phrase to denote poems in which the primary impulse and source of interest are the storyteller and the events he relates, whether they are merely tem-porally or causally connected. Accordingly, Pauline and Para-celsus are not considered narratives because they are essentially confessional, self-expressive in tendency; there is little interest in external event.
By the same token, poems in which the primary source of pleasure is the speaker's psychological revelation are considered dramatic monologues, not narrative poems. I am concerned only with those poems by Browning which can prop-erly be read and enjoyed basically as stories. The most interesting and valuable element in Browning's storytelling techniques is his exploitation of three classes of narrators: 1) the strictly objective (as in The Inn Album and" The Boy and the Angel"), 2) the dramatically imagined partici-pant or onlooker (The Flight of the Duchess," Incident of the French Camp," and" A Forgiveness"), and 3) Browning's narrative persona (Sordello and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country). The third category offers the most provocative narrators because they are the most devious and ironic, but the other two types require some discussion.

# RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL THEMES:-

One of the greatest poets of the Victorian period, Robert Browning is taught universally from school through university levels. Given such magnitude, the multifaceted poet deserves research attention from various perspectives. A fascinating aspect of his poetry is that, in spite of his refusal to be labelled as a Christian, he displays strong faith in God and the afterlife. His poetry is steeped in religious connotations that derive heavily from the Bible. There are striking similarities between many concepts preached by Islam and Christianity. It will be interesting to view his poetry from the perspective of the former. Islam emphasises its own unique concepts and values to help its adherents achieve their vision of success. Browning, though accepting the central ideas of Christianity, deviates from it conceptually. Given this background, this article attempts to evaluate his notion of faith and its practice from Islamic perspectives and discover where the poet’s ideas converge with those of Islam and where they differ.

Robert Browning (1812-1889) stood firm as a “tower of light” amidst the chaos and confusion that swept over Victorian England in the wake
of Darwinism and its use by atheists to vindicate their rejection of religion. He re-awakened faith in religion among his contemporaries
instead of surrendering to the doubt that is often associated with the Poet Laureate Tennyson (1809-1892). Living through the turmoil of the
Victorian era, he had to address the religious scepticism that threatened
to swamp many of his contemporaries. He found his faith stronger after
he had constructively dealt with his misgivings. One who believes and achieves a fruitful life through such a way grows more confident in
their faith, and it is reflected in Browning’s words and actions. Pro-active rather than passive by disposition, Browning undertook to share
his experiences of overcoming doubt and building confidence with his readers. In his approach to faith, he displays an empirical rather than a
theoretical attitude towards its observance. His works as well as his life reflect his conviction that faith is effective only when applied to one’s thoughts, perceptions and actions to engender a spiritual transformation
within the individual. Faith that fails to produce a positive change in the life and character of its adherents is either insufficient or practiced
inadequately.

With age, Browning became more enthusiastic about faith. In fact, from 1850 onwards he never wrote without referring to religion.Browning was a monotheist (Ludick, 1936:15) who considered this life a test from God to determine who deserves rewards or punishment in the hereafter. Accounts of his character by friends and biographers describe him as a positive, respectable, sociable and robust man who believed in taking responsibility and making sacrifices for others and lived a life committed to family, friends and acquaintances – qualities
highly valued universally. Even as he was explicitly reluctant to call himself a Christian (Buchanan, 1891:198), Browning used to go to church throughout his life. He was unwilling to identify himself as a Christian but had strong faith in God and the afterlife. Therefore, it will
be interesting to examine the application of this faith in practice. 

# IRONY AND WIT:-


Although many of Browning's contemporaries and early critics noted his affinity with Donne, the resemblances in the work of the two poets were not investigated in any detail and usually have been neglected in more recent studies. Yet the intellectual kinship between the two poets was very close. There were important similarities-and alsol differences-in their philosophical ideas and aesthetic theories. Browning also apparently drew heavily upon his very thorough knowledge of Donne in his use of the dramatic monologue, casuistical logic, metaphor, and wit. The linking of the names of Donne and Browning apparently began in 1872 when Alexander Grosart dedicated his edition of Donne's poems to Browning," the poet of the century for thinkers," and assured prospective readers that Browning" has a wealth of admiration for Donne." At the turn of the century Edmund Gosse wrote that" the modern appreciation of Donne seems to begin with Robert Browning." He explained that" the stamp of the Dean's peculiar intensity of feeling can be traced in many of Browning's lyrics; his famous' obscurity'is closely analogous to Donne's." A few years later Stephen Gwynn commented on the relationship between Browning and Donne," a man of very similar qualities and defects."


# CONCLUSION:-

In conclusion, Browning's lyrical tapestry weaves a rich fabric of themes, unraveling the intricacies of human emotion, societal nuances, and the timeless dance between darkness and light. Through his poetic craftsmanship, Browning invites readers to explore the labyrinth of the human psyche, where each verse serves as a thread in the intricate design of life's profound tapestry. As we unravel the layers of his verses, we discover not only the beauty of poetic expression but also the profound insights into the complexities of the human experience. Browning's poetic journey transcends time, leaving us with a tapestry that continues to resonate with the echoes of our own emotions and reflections.


# REFERENCES:-












Drew, Philip. “Robert Browning | Victorian Poet, Dramatist & Lyricist.” Britannica, 27 October 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Browning. Accessed 1 December 2023.




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