Robert Browning Research Paper

Robert Browning Research Paper Robert Browning, born on May 7, 1812, grew up in an environment highly conducive to the furthering of his interests in writing: his mother was an accomplished pianist and his father, though he was a bank clerk formally, was also an artist and scholar, and boasted a collection of books exceeding 6,000 volumes. Browning grew up learning multiple languages, Latin, Greek, and French, before he was 15 and spent much of his early years studying on his own, showing great interest in the works of Percy Shelley. Though he was enrolled at the University of London for a time, he found no fulfillment in it. For some time, Browning wrote minor plays, which received little praise and success, but nonetheless helped to form

More than a physical attraction, Browning’s poems seem to put a greater focus on an emotional and spiritual romantic connection between lovers. According to E. D. H. Johnson, a professor at Princeton University, “Ideal love is for Browning the consummation of an intuitive process in which the lovers transcend the barriers of their separate individualities and achieve spiritual union... Browning’s men and women, then, are always seeking to pierce the barrier which...separates two isolated souls reaching toward each other” (Johnson). Love is not simply the physical connection between two people, but even more so one of the soul. Browning’s own romance with his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning showed some of this ideology; before he had ever met her, he first fell in love with some of her poetry. Only after months of correspondence through letters and poems to each other did the two meet, and eventually marry, but by this time he was already deeply in love with her. Contained in Browning’s collection of works Men and Women, dedicated to Elizabeth, is the poem “In a Year” which, although talking of a love lost, through its delicate word choice, portrays a love that was greater than the pull of a handsome

Once again, the theme of a weary path to certain doom is quite apparent in the poem, reminiscent of “Prospice”, although differing in its end. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came” offers its reader none of the assurances of a happy ending of the prior example, but instead almost confirms to the reader that the narrator is to die, with no hints at what lies beyond. The poem ends on somewhat of a question,