Robert Browning 1812–1889

English poet and dramatist.

INTRODUCTION

Though Browning was eventually considered a premier Victorian poet, his critical
reputation was hard won. Throughout his career, he honed the dramatic monologue,
elevating the form to a new level. His experimentation with versification and with
language, combined with the diversity and scope of his subject matter, forced Browning's
critics to realize that this poet could not be evaluated by conventional literary standards.
Particularly devoted to dramatic characterization, Browning explored the human
psychology through his characters and the dramatic situations he presented. Modern
critics are concerned with Browning's poetic development, with the themes that unite the
various poems in a particular volume, and with the unique elements of Browning's
innovative style.

Biographical Information

Born in Camberwell, a borough in southeast London, Browning was raised in a relatively

affluent environment. His father was a well-read clerk for the Bank of England, and his
mother was a strict Congregationalist. While Browning read widely as a boy, his formal
education was somewhat irregular. Beginning in the early 1820s he attended the nearby
Peckam School, where he studied for four years. Because Browning had not been raised
as an Anglican, he was unable to attend the major English universities, Oxford and
Cambridge. Instead, in 1828 he entered the recently-founded London University but
terminated his studies after less than one year. Browning decided to pursue a career as a
poet and lived in his parents' home, supported by them, until 1846. He published his first
poem, Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession, anonymously in 1833. Browning continued
writing and publishing and experimenting with the dramatic monologue until 1845, when
he fell in love with Elizabeth Barrett. The pair secretly married in 1846, then departed for
Italy where they settled in Florence and wrote until Elizabeth's death in 1861. Browning
then returned to England, and after a period of literary inactivity, he began writing again.
He remained highly prolific throughout the rest of his life. Browning died in 1889 while
visiting his son in Venice. Browning's body was returned to England and buried in the
Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Major Works

After the anonymous publication of Pauline, which Browning later insisted was a dramatic
piece, many readers speculated that the sentiments expressed were the poet's own. In
his next work, Paracelsus(1835), Browning established the objective framework offered
by a more dramatic form and was thus able to distance himself from the characters in the
poem. The dramatic monologue is based on the life of the Renaissance chemist
Paracelsus, and the work received largely positive critical reviews. Browning then
published Sordello in 1840, also based on a Renaissance subject, but the poem was less
than favorably received by the critics, many of whom found it obscure and affected. In
1841, Browning began publishing a series of poems and dramas under the titleBells and
Pomegranates. The final volume appeared in 1846 and failed to restore Browning's
reputation among critics. In 1855, with the publication ofMen and Women, containing
Browning's well-known love poems and dramatic monologues, Browning began to receive
the respect of some of his critics, although popular success still eluded him. It was not
until the 1860s, and in particular the publication of Dramatis Personaein 1864, that
Browning achieved major critical and popular success. The volume was followed shortly
thereafter by his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book (1868-69). A series of dramatic
monologues spoken by different characters, the work was based on an Italian murder
case.The Ring and the Book cemented Browning's reputation as one of the foremost
poets of Victorian England.

Critical Reception

Contemporary critical acclaim evaded Browning for many years. Gertrude Reese Hudson
observes that the poet's critics required regular and frequent exposure to his unique
dramatic method in order to recognize the excellence of Browning's art. Hudson also
notes that other factors contributed to Browning's winning over of his critics, including
their changing opinion regarding the nature of poetry, as well as a growing appreciation
for both the timeliness of Browning's writing, his intellect and originality, and the "totality
of his achievement."

Browning's highly individualized style and his usage of dramatic monologue fascinate
modern scholars as much as these elements troubled his early critics. John Woolford and
Daniel Karlin demonstrate that in using the dramatic monologue format, Browning was
primarily interested in the creation and development of dramatic speakers and dramatic
situations. The two critics also analyze Browning's style, finding that his poetry, in its
focus on the speaker, insists on being read aloud. Woolford and Karlin further argue that
Browning develops two distinct voices in his poetry, voices Browning himself described as
"saying" and "singing" voices and which the critics contend result from the influence of
the Romantics on Browning's work. In a separate essay, Daniel Karlin examines
Browning's use of binary oppositions, finding that "every Browning poem is oppositional
in nature." Karlin studies in particular the opposition between love and hate, maintaining
that Browning explores hate not simply as the opposite of love, but as a force with its
own purpose, a force which can lead to love as well as self-realization.

Other critics review certain volumes of Browning's poetry as a whole, arguing that the
individual poems support a larger theme or purpose. Clyde de L. Ryals studies
Browning'sDramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) with this in mind. Ryals stresses that
the theme of loyalty unites the poems in this volume, and that this theme is often
expressed in an ironic manner. Furthermore, Ryals argues that while the majority of the
poems may concern national loyalties, the poems also explore other kinds of loyalties,
including loyalty to one's self, to one's religion, and to one's beloved. Similarly, Adam
Roberts argues for the unity of the poems in Browning's Men and Women (1855),
asserting that the volume demonstrates Browning's first successful attempt at balancing
the subjective and objective impulses in his poetry. This synthesis is achieved, Roberts
argues, through Browning's characterization. Roberts explains that compared to the
idiosyncratic, often insane characters in the earlier Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, the
personalities in Men and Women, though complex, "communicate on something
approaching our own level," and thus engender empathy and understanding among
readers. Roberts goes on to discuss how Browning's continued usage of "grotesque" style
and imagery (including colloquial language, rough syntax, and precise but blunt forms of
expression) helps to link the form of these poems to their content.
Considerable critical discussion of Browning's work pertains to his murder mystery, The
Ring and the Book. The twelve dramatic monologues, delivered by different characters,
have led critics to question which, if any, of these characters serves as the moral
authority, or center, of the poem. Adam Potkay argues against assigning this position of
moral authority to any one of the characters and instead considers the poem as a
"decentered struggle of interpretations" in which the character of Guido leads the way in
"decentering" the poem by questioning the very conception of identity. W. David Shaw
likewise contends that there is no central viewpoint in The Ring and the Book and
maintains that while Browning ranks the authority of the characters in the poem, the
poet creates no central authority figure. Additionally, Shaw explores the way in which
deconstructionism and hermeneutics pervade Browning's masterwork, finding the Pope
aligned with hermeneutical criticism and Guido and Tertium Quid aligned with the
deconstructionists.