Robert Browning

1. Khlood Al-BogamiAfnanBaqshDoa’aNashshqiSamerah Al-GamdiBdoor Al-SolamiSection ACourse No: 3214shift group

2. Robert Browning

3. 1812-1889

4. Browning was born in Camberwell a suburb of London, England, the first son of Robert and Sarah Anna Browning. His father was a man of both fine intellect and character, who worked as a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England. • Robert was an impulsive, fearless little boy who was also rather a prodigy, writing poems and reading Homer at a very young age. He was raised in a household of significant literary resources

5. He learned many languages and devoured his father's history books. He also liked to read books that were considered rather shocking and not quite suitable for children. • In childhood, he was distinguished by a love of poetry and naturalhistory. By twelve, he had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found. After attending several private schools he began to be educated by a tutor, having demonstrated a strong dislike for institutionalized education.

6. Browning was a fast learner and by the age of fourteen was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin as well as his native English. He became a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley. Following the precedent of Shelley, At age sixteen, he attended University College London, but left after his first year. His mother’s staunch evangelical faith circumscribed the pursuit of his studying at either Oxford University or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England. He had substantial musical ability and he composed arrangements of various songs.

7. Middle life • Browning's poetry was known to the cognoscenti from fairly early on in his life, but he remained relatively obscure as a poet till his middle age. • In Florence he worked on the poems that eventually comprised his two-volume Men and Women, in 1861, when he returned to England and became part of the London literary scene, that his reputation started to take off. In 1868, after five years work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book, and finally achieved really significant recognition. Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome.

8. The Ring and the Book was the poet's most ambitious project and has been hailed as a tour de force of dramatic poetry. Published separately in four volumes, the poem was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly forty years of work.

9. Robert wrote a great deal right up to the end of his life, though he was plagued by colds and bronchitis; his last book, Asolando, was published the day of his death, 12 December 1889. Robert had always assumed he would be buried beside Elizabeth, but as that cemetery had been closed to further burials, he instead buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.

10. Browning's poems • A Light woman • My last Duchess • Memorabilia • Before • In a year • Women and roses

11. Browning's poetic style • Browning’s fame today rests mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words not only convey setting and action but also reveal the speaker’s character. Unlike a soliloquy, the meaning in a Browning dramatic monologue is not what the speaker directly reveals but what he inadvertently "gives away" about himself in the process of rationalizing past actions.

12. Browning chooses some of the most debased, extreme and even criminally psychotic characters, no doubt for the challenge of building a sympathetic case for a character who doesn't deserve one and to cause the reader to squirm at the temptation to acquit a character who may be a homicidal psychopath.