The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browning: A Literary Life

by Kennedy, Richard S.; Hair, Donald S.

• ISBN13: 9780826216915
• ISBN10: 0826216919
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-30
• Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr

Summary

The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browningoffers an accessible and authoritative guide to the essentials of Robert Browningrs"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 Browningrs"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 readerrs"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 Robertrs"s personality, and also correct biases against Elizabethrs"s influence. Their critical commentary focuses on the poetrs"s dramatic imagination and argues that his extensive body of work afterThe 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 Browningrs"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 poetrs"s life and thought.The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browninginvites readers of a singular body of poetry to achieve a new understanding of Browningrs"s work and a greater appreciation of his life.

Author Biography

Donald S. Hair is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Western Ontario.