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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’.

1 vote

Evidence for the identity of Browning’s “lyric Love”?

The words ‘Lyric Love’ reappear in the third-to-last line of the poem, at the end of book XII: If the rough ore be rounded to a ring, Render all duty which good ring should do, And, failing gr …
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1 vote

Why does Browning need to be ‘manned by Manning’?

Cook summarizes these lines as follows: The Roman authorities, before allowing Browning to ‘rove and rummage’ among their records, required, he says, that he should ‘mend his ways’, that he should be …
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2 votes

What does Browning's cloistered soliloquist mean by ‘Hy, Zy, Hine’?

TL;DR: No convincing explanation has yet been put forward. Perhaps nowhere else in Browning scholarship has more critical ink been expended on fewer words than the three of “Hy, Zy, Hine”. Ja …
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5 votes
Accepted

What does Browning's patriot mean by "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe"?

These lines need to be interpreted in the context of the complete stanza: Thus I entered, and thus I go!       In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe       …
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10 votes
Accepted

In "Love Among the Ruins", what is 'a carpet'?

This sentence is quite difficult, but we can untangle it by putting the subclause into a parenthesis instead of setting it off with a comma as Browning did: Such a carpet (as, this summer-time, o'ers …
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3 votes

What does “Hoti’s business” refer to, in Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’?

Enclitic De For this allusion we have an explanation from Browning himself: The following letter by Browning appeared in the London Daily News of Nov. 21, 1874: “To the Editor of The Daily News. Sir, …
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3 votes

What is a ‘tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree’?

Tree of vices This is an example of the kind of ‘allegorical woodcut’ that Cook’s friend may have had in mind: From Boccaccio, De Claris Mulieribus, published by Aegidius van der Heerstraten, Louvai …
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2 votes

“It’s fast holding by the rings in front” in Browning’s ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’

The “Corner-house” was mentioned earlier in the poem:                                                 Who am I? Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend Three streets off—he ’s a certain … how d’ …
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2 votes

In "Sordello", how do we know the rejected spirit is Shelley?

Browning gives us two, or maybe three, clues: “The Athenian” is the Greek playwright Aeschylus, who fought the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. Shelley’s verse drama Prometheus Unbound …
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