English Literature

uch ink has been spilt in proving and disproving that Browning is an obscure poet. It is hard to absolve Browning of the charge of unintelligibility and difficulty. In his own age, he was considered very difficult and obscure and hence could not achieved popularity and recognition like his contemporary Tennyson. "Sordellow" was regarded as more obscure than any other poem in the English language. Mrs. Carlyle read the poem and could not judge whether 'Sordellow' was a man, or a city, or a book. Douglas Jerrold, after reading it said: My God! I am an idiot. My health is restored, but my mind is gone. Browning certainly is a very difficult poet. Dawson calls him "the Carlyle of poetry". Various reasons are given for the obscurity and difficulty of his poetry. According to some critics, obscurity of Browning's poetry is � a piece of intellectual vanity indulged in more and more insolently as his years and fame increased". But as ...

Browning's Philosophy of Life (Optimism) Browning is a very consistent thinker of optimistic philosophy of life. And as an optimist, he is a moralist and a religious teacher. His optimism is based on life's realities. Life is full of imperfection but in this very imperfection lies hope, according to Browning's philosophical views. Actually the philosophy of Browning is the philosophy of a man looking at the world with more than a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He holds a very distinct place among the writers of the Victorian Age. He is an uncompromising foe of "Scientific Materialism". He preaches God and universality as the central truth of his philosophy of life. There are a lot of confusions and conflicts in this age. There are the conflicts between art and life, art and morality, content and form, man and woman, classic education and progressive education, flesh and spirit, body and soul and what not. In this entire ...

"Porphyria�s Lover", under the name Porphyria, was first published in a magazine named Monthly Repository. It appeared again in Dramatic Lyrics together with "Johannes Agricola in Meditation". It is significant that both the poems were published under the common title "Madhouse Cells". Taking the same format of octo-syllabic lines, like the other �madhouse� poem, Porphyria�s Lover opens with an ironic discrepancy between the speaker�s statement and the real meaning. But the poem is much more complex than Johannes Agricola, where the issue of motivation is concerned. Like Agricola, Porphyria�s lover describes a supposedly natural course of action, which is, on introspection, illogical. Where Agricola rejects the authority of the Gospels, Porphyria�s lover breaks one of God�s Ten Commandments that,           �Thou shall not kill.�     The Old Testament, �Exodus� 20: 13. The lover does so by perpetrating a murder. Again,...