Many of Robert Browning's poems are concerned with different
aspects of human identity. In the great dramatic monologues, such
as Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto and My Last Duchess, the
question of exactly who is speaking obviously concerns us, but to
what extent do the speaker's language and attitudes mirror those of
the poet himself ? In the various poems on the theme of love and
sexual relationships which Browning included in his published
collections, we inevitably want to know which of these spring
directly from his personal experience. Browning, however, never
felt a duty to reveal himself to the reader within his poetry.
Though he admired several of the Romantic writers among the poetic
generation immediately preceding his own, especially Shelley and
Wordsworth, he was unwilling to follow their example by relating
his discourse to the concept of a dominant ego, an "I" whose
personal drama of feeling and experience formed the substance of a
sustained narrative. Several of his works deliberately criticise
the tendency, made fashionable by the Romantics, to see a poem as
offering clues to its writer's identity and, by association, his
private life. In 1874 Browning a poem, House, arguing that the
reader has no right to share an author's privacy: "For a ticket,
apply to the Publisher." No: thanking the public, I must decline. A
peep through my window, if folk prefer; But, please you, no foot
over threshold of mine!" In this guide, Jonathan Keates looks at
the roots of Browning's poetry, at at why he is so influential and
at how, despite his determination to keep his private and poetic
identities separate, some of his work is so shocking.
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