Questions tagged [robert-browning]
For questions about English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), known for dramatic monologues including ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover’; and for long narrative poems including ‘Sordello’ and ‘The Ring and the Book’.
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In "Love Among the Ruins", what is 'a carpet'?
The poem "Love Among the Ruins" by Robert Browning starts like this in its third verse:
And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'er-...
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What does “Hoti’s business” refer to, in Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’?
Robert Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’, first published in Men and Women (1855), describes some of the grammarian’s achievements:
He settled Hoti’s business—let it be!—
Properly based Oun—
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What does Browning's patriot mean by "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe"?
In the sixth stanza of the poem "The Patriot" by Robert Browning, what do the last three lines mean?
“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
“Me?”—God might question; now instead,
‘Tis God ...
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In "Sordello", how do we know the rejected spirit is Shelley?
In book I of Sordello (1840) by Robert Browning, the speaker addresses a group of spirits,
Summoned together from the world’s four ends,
Dropped down from heaven or cast up from hell,
To hear the ...
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Which of Sacchetti’s stories are parodied in "The Ring and the Book"?
In book V of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868), Count Guido Franceschini compares his plight to that of a character in a story by Franco Sacchetti:
Aha, Sacchetti again!—“Dame,”—quoth ...
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Why does Caponsacchi count his fingers in "The Ring and the Book"?
In book VI of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, Giuseppe Caponsacchi tries seducing two women of Arezzo with love-poetry, but he is disappointed with the results:
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What does Browning's cloistered soliloquist mean by ‘Hy, Zy, Hine’?
Here’s the last stanza of Robert Browning’s ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’, first published in Dramatic Lyrics (1842):
Or, there’s Satan!—one might venture
Pledge one’s soul to him, yet ...
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What is a ‘tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree’?
In book III of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, Violante adopts an unwanted new-born child and passes her off to her husband Pietro as their daughter Pompilia:
Well, having gained Pompilia, ...
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Evidence for the identity of Browning’s “lyric Love”?
Book I of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868) ends with an apostrophe of 26 lines, addressed to “lyric Love”. The passage was admired by many, including Arthur Quiller-Couch, who ...
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Why does Browning need to be ‘manned by Manning’?
In Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868), the narrator buys an ‘old yellow book’ at a street market in Florence, containing documents from a seventeenth-century murder trial at Rome. He ...
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