Dramatic Lyrics

Last updated

Dramatic Lyrics is a collection of English poems by Robert Browning, first published in 1842 [1] as the third volume in a series of self-published books entitled Bells and Pomegranates. It is most famous as the first appearance of Browning's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin , but also contains several of the poet's other best-known pieces, including My Last Duchess , Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister , Porphyria's Lover , and Johannes Agricola in Meditation .

Contents

Contents

Many of the original titles given by Browning to the poems in this collection, as with its "follow-up" collection Dramatic Romances and Lyrics , are different from the ones he later gave them in various editions of his collected works.[ citation needed ] Since this book was originally self-published in a very small edition, these poems are now always referred to by their later titles.

The poems were written between 1836 (possibly late 1835) and 1842. [1]

Original titlesLater titles
Cavalier Tunes
  1. Marching Along
  2. Give a Rouse
  3. My Wife Gertrude
Cavalier Tunes
  1. Marching Along
  2. Give a Rouse
  3. Boot and Saddle
Italy and France
  1. Italy
  2. France

Camp and Cloister
  1. Camp (French)
  2. Cloister (Spanish)

  • In a Gondola
  • Artemis Prologizes
  • Waring
Queen-Worship
  1. Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli
  2. Cristina

Madhouse Cells
  1.  
  2.  

  • Through the Metidja to Abd-El-Kadr, 1842
  • The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred, Lord Tennyson</span> British Poet Laureate (1809–1892)

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson,, was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Browning</span> English poet and playwright (1812–1889)

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carsten Hauch</span> Danish poet (1790–1872)

Johannes Carsten Hauch was a Danish poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Winther</span> Danish poet (1796–1876)

Rasmus Villads Christian Ferdinand Winther was a Danish lyric poet.

Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:

  1. The single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment […].
  2. This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors' presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.
  3. The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's temperament and character.
<span class="mw-page-title-main">My Last Duchess</span> 1842 poem by Robert Browning

"My Last Duchess" is a poem by Robert Browning, frequently anthologised as an example of the dramatic monologue. It first appeared in 1842 in Browning's Dramatic Lyrics. The poem is composed in 28 rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friedrich Halm</span> Austrian dramatist, poet and novella writer

Baron Eligius Franz Joseph von Münch-Bellinghausen was an Austrian dramatist, poet and novella writer of the Austrian Biedermeier period and beyond, and is more generally known under his pseudonym Friedrich Halm.

<i>Men and Women</i> (poetry collection)

Men and Women is a collection of fifty-one poems in two volumes by Robert Browning, first published in 1855. While now generally considered to contain some of the best of Browning's poetry, at the time it was not received well and sold poorly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">János Garay</span> Hungarian poet (1812–1853)

János Garay was a Hungarian poet and author, born in Szekszárd, Tolna County. From 1823 to 1828 he studied at Pécs, and subsequently, in 1829, at the University of Pest. In 1834 he brought out an heroic poem, in hexameters, under the title Csatár. Garay was an energetic journalist, and in 1838 he moved to Pozsony, where he edited the political journal Hírnök (Herald). He returned to Pest in 1839, when he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1842 he was admitted into the Kisfaludy Society, of which he became second secretary.

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics is a collection of English poems by Robert Browning, first published in 1845 in London, as the seventh volume in a series of self-published books entitled Bells and Pomegranates.

Jocoseria is a collection of short poems by Robert Browning, first published in 1883. Effectively a continuation of the Dramatic Idyls series, the book was not well received by critics at the time and has continued to be considered one of the poet's least effective collections, aside from the famous prologue to the collection.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

"Johannes Agricola in Meditation" (1836) is an early dramatic monologue by Robert Browning. The poem was first published in the Monthly Repository; later, it appeared in Dramatic Lyrics (1842) paired with Porphyria's Lover under the title "Madhouse Cells".

"Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" is a soliloquy written by Robert Browning, first published in his collection Dramatic Lyrics (1842). It is written in the voice of an unnamed Spanish monk. The poem consists of nine eight-line stanzas and is written in trochaic tetrameter. The plot of the poem centers around the speaker's hatred for "Brother Lawrence", a fellow monk in the cloister.

"How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" is a poem by Robert Browning published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845. The poem, one of the volume's "dramatic romances", is a first-person narrative told, in breathless galloping meter, by one of three riders; the midnight errand is urgent—"the news which alone could save Aix from her fate"—although the nature of that good news is never revealed. Two of the riders' horses collapse en route; the narrator alone makes it to Aix with the news, and rewards his horse with a drink of wine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Simeon Stylites (poem)</span> 1833 poem by Alfred Tennyson

"St Simeon Stylites" is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson in 1833 and published in his 1842 collection of poetry. The poem describes the actions of St. Simeon Stylites, a Christian ascetic saint who recounts his various physical acts in hopes that he has earned his place in heaven. It captures Tennyson's feelings following the death of a close friend, Arthur Hallam, and contains feelings of self-loathing and regret. The work has ironic overtones that give it the appearance of a satirical work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Lost Leader (poem)</span> 1845 poem by Robert Browning

"The Lost Leader" is an 1845 poem by Robert Browning first published in his book Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. It berates William Wordsworth for what Browning considered his desertion of the liberal cause, and his lapse from his high idealism. More generally, it is an attack on any liberal leader who has deserted his cause. It is one of Browning's "best known, if not actually best, poems".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Story (poet)</span>

Robert Story, known as "the Craven Poet", was an English poet.

<i>Meeting at Night</i> Poem written by Robert Browning

"Meeting at Night" is a Victorian English love poem by Robert Browning. The original poem appeared in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) in which "Night" and "Morning" were two sections. In 1849, the poet separated them into the two poems "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at Morning". In the poem, the speaker is in urgency to meet his beloved and for this he has to travel through the sea at night to reach the beach where his lover is waiting.

References

  1. 1 2 Jack, Ian (1987). "Browning's "Dramatic Lyrics" (1842)". Browning Institute Studies. 15. Cambridge University Press: 161–175. ISSN   0092-4725 . Retrieved 21 November 2024.