The dramatic imagination of Robert Browning : a literary life / Richard S. Kennedy and Donald S. Hair.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kennedy, Richard S.

Contributor:

Hair, Donald S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Browning, Robert, 1812-1889.

Browning, Robert.

Browning, Robert, 1812-1889--Friends and associates.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861--Friends and associates.

Poets, English--19th century--Biography.

Poets, English.

Married people--Great Britain--Biography.

Married people.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (509 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browning offers an accessible and authoritative guide to the essentials of Robert Browning's life and poetry. Drawing from his personal letters and from the diaries and memoirs of his contemporaries, this literary biography provides a wealth of information about the main events of his life, including the social, political, religious, and aesthetic issues that concerned him; it offers critical commentary defining the central characteristics of his poetry; and it tracks the changes in his reputation through contemporary reviews and the growth of the Browning societies. An English poet who was deeply responsive to European culture and affairs, Robert Browning has sometimes been dismissed by modern readers for his obscurity or roughness of language. Now two distinguished scholars of Browning's work trace the arc of his development as an artist and thinker from his earliest poems to the last in his long and remarkably productive career. The authors illustrate how Browning moved from describing "incidents in the development of a soul," to developing his reader's soul as collaborator in the artistic process, to the development of his own soul in the making of poetry. Through a fresh reading of not only his poetry but also the letters of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, they have garnered details that situate the two in historical context, provide a vivid sense of Robert's personality, and also correct biases against Elizabeth's influence. Their critical commentary focuses on the poet's dramatic imagination and argues that his extensive body of work after The Ring and the Book¿often dismissed as evidencing a decline in his poetic powers represented new directions in his poetry marked by inventive dialogue, verbal puzzles, and virtuoso rhyming. Written to appeal to both general readers and scholars, the book will enable anyone to read Browning's poems with a firm sense of the subjects and practices that are central to his texts, along with a knowledge of their context in the poet's life and thought. The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browning invites readers of a singular body of poetry to achieve a new understanding of Browning's work and a greater appreciation of his life.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Signposts Unregarded

Chapter 2 The Brownings of Southampton Street

Chapter 3 The Education of a Would-Be Poet

Chapter 4 Filling the Reservoir

Chapter 5 Browning Aspires to Be Shelley

Chapter 6 Browning Aspires to Be Shakespeare

Chapter 7 A Literary Disaster

Chapter 8 Browning as Dramatist for Closet and Stage

Chapter 9 Varieties of Poetic Monodrama Dramatic Lyrics

Chapter 10 Another Duchess and a Dying Bishop

Chapter 11 A Worthy Fellow Poet

Chapter 12 Miss Barrett's Mysterious Illness

Chapter 13 Monodramatic Developments Dramatic Romances and Lyrics

Chapter 14 Some Surprises about the Barrett Household

Chapter 15 Robert Awakes without a Headache

Chapter 16 Flight to Italy

Chapter 17 Joys and Sorrows

Chapter 18 Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

Chapter 19 London and Paris

Chapter 20 The International Life

Chapter 21 Dreamwork

Chapter 22 Withdrawal into the Creative Life

Chapter 23 Spirits from the Vasty Deep

Chapter 24 Troubles in London

Chapter 25 Men and Women

Chapter 26 "It is high time that this sort of thing be stopped"

Chapter 27 That Little-Seeming Substance

Chapter 28 The Good of Poetry

Chapter 29 Fathers, Sons, Books

Chapter 30 Complex Poetry

Chapter 31 Fame and Its Discontents

Chapter 32 At Play in the Land of Souls

Chapter 33 House and Shop

Chapter 34 English Roses and Florentine Lilies

Endnotes

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-476) and index.

ISBN:

0-8262-6552-9

OCLC:

290589406