BROWNING – SOME NOTES ON HIS NARRATIVE METHOD These notes are intended to give you some ideas to thi nk about as you revise Browning’s poems for the Aspects of Narrative paper. They do not constitute answers to examination questions, questions, nor do they cover every possible point to be made about about Browning’s narrative method. I hope they open up the poems to you and help you develop your own ideas.
CONTENTS The Patriot ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2 My Last Duchess ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 The Pied Piper of Hamelin ............................................................................................................................................ 5 Porphyria’s Lover ............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Fra Lippo Lippi .................................................................................................................................................................. 9 The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s church .................................................................................. 12
THE PATRIOT The Story: Story: an unnamed ‘patriot’ is being led to the gallows and reflects on how his fortunes have changed since his triumphal entry into the city a year before. Voice: Voice: first-person intra-diegetic intra-diegetic narrator; an unnamed ‘patriot’; focus of the voice is on personal experience Form: Form: regular, five-line stanzas, stanzas, largely in iambic metre. Rhyme-scheme runs ABABA ABABA Setting: Setting: a city (‘house(‘house-roofs’ and ‘church‘church -spires’) spires’) but unnamed (we can assume it is European, and it conforms to the archetype of a medieval city in its ‘old walls’); no time information given at all. Within the poem, setting shifts from the ‘roofs’ and ‘spires’ ‘spires’ of the first three stanzas to the ‘Shambles Gate’ and ‘scaffold’ of the final three. Structure: Structure : the narrative is organised retrospectively, looking back ‘a year ago’. The poem is divided into two parts, the first describing the triumphal arrival of the patriot, the second his rejection and execution.
Notes: Notes: The Patriot is distinctive in this collection of poems poems for a number of reasons. It is the most obviously ‘poetic’, following a strict formal pattern of five-line five -line stanzas and employing poetic devices such as the alliteration of ‘the church-spires church -spires fl amed, amed, such fl ags ags they had’ (note, too, the internal rhyme of ‘flags’ and ‘had’, all of which contribute to the music, impressive quality of the scene.) Correspondingly, Correspondingly, the voice is much less distinctive than in the other poems in the selection, with none of Fra Lippo Lippi’s turbulent energy or the Duke’s malevolent cunning, but this fits in with the narrative’s archetypal quality: the images, events and characters remind the reader of many other narratives that follow this pattern, such as Coriolanus, Jesus’ entry entry in to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and even the Pied Piper.
Top Tip: Tip: when thinking about this poem, look at how Browning deliberately obscures conventional details details of plot (such as why the crowd turn against the Patriot) in order to foreground his experience of suffering their displeasure.
MY LAST DUCHESS The Story: Story: the Duke of Ferrara is negotiating a marriage with an unnamed Count, and tells the story of his previous marriage to the C ount’s envoy, who has been sent to agree terms. Voice: Voice: the Duke of Ferrara, a confident, arrogant speaker whose first-person, intra-diegetic intra-diegetic narrative comprises comprises the whole of the poem. Note the boldness of the opening, opening, but equally the ambiguity of the second line, line, a pattern which continues throughout throughout the poem. Note the way in which Browning develops a narrative voice which is not in c ontrol of the story it tells: the fragmented syntax and outbursts outbursts of lines 31 and 32 suggest frustration frustration with an inability to find Duchess’. a form of words to express what it was that so aggravated him about his ‘last Duchess’. Tellingly, for all the elegant phrasing of the early part of the poem, his disgust that ‘she ranked / My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old-name nine-hundred-years-old- name / With anybody’s gift’, is expressed in crude, childish terms. He recovers recovers his poise later, in the chillingly evasive passage about a ‘just pretence ‘just pretence … for dowry’, but not to sufficient extent to disguise the cruelly gloating quality of ‘Then ‘Then all smiles stopped together’, which embodies both the brazen boastfulness and arch ambiguity of this thi s narrative voice. When reading this poem, be acutely sensitive to irony – while the Duke criticises the Duchess for smiling at gifts he scorns, such as the ‘white mule’ or ‘the dropping of the daylight in the West’ his own ostentatious materialism (expressed in his boastful references to famous artists) only makes makes him seem crass and superficial. superficial. Similarly, his pride at ‘Neptune taming a ‘sea-horse’ is a tiny, weak sea-horse’ sea-horse’ reveals not his exquisite taste, but his inability to see that a ‘seacreature. Browning often often uses narrators who who lack self-awareness, and enjoys the way that irony i rony undermines their pretentions and arrogance.
Form: Form: a dramatic monologue, monologue, written in rhyming couplets couplets in iambic pentameter. The choice of this form allows Browning to imitate the rhythms of natural speech, but also, through the rhyme scheme, to create a sense of control (compare with Fra Lippo Lippi and Porphyria). Look at the the extensive use of enjambment, which is important in creating the voice, where no opportunity is given to the listener to interrupt. interrupt. Crucially, in a dramatic monologue monologue the narrative is concerned concerned more with the storyteller and how they seek to present events, rather than simply the events themselves.
Structure: Structure : the story of the Duke’s previous marriage is framed by references to his conversation with the Count’s envoy, such as the direct address at the beginning and the final ten lines of the poem. The effect of this is chilling, as the reader is invited to contemplate contemplate not only the horrible fate apparently suffered by the previous Duchess, but the possibility that the same fate may befall the next wife. Following the opening comments comments about the painting and and how it was painted by Frá Pandolf (an invented i nvented artist, but one whose name echoes those of real geniuses such as Frá Angelico) the thought of a ‘spot o f joy’ causes him to digress (how unintentionally I leave to you to decide) onto the subject of his late wife’s ingratitude. ingratitude. The story is told only allusively , never through direct narration of specific events , until the Duke’s revelation (again, how carefully stage-managed stage-managed do you think it is?) that he had his wife murdered. The poem concludes with an appeal for for money (here Browning offers offers the reader
another hint of a possible story which the Duke is suppressing) in the form of a dowry from his next wife’s father.
Setting: Setting: Browning sets this poem in Ferrara, a city in Northern Italy, and, although he does not make explicit reference to the period (as he does in Fra Lippo Lippi or The Bishop Orders his Renaissance. Ferrara is a tomb), the artists’ names recall famous painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. telling choice of setting, as it was the seat of the Este family, whose scions attracted more than their fair share of notoriety during a period when bumping off your enemies in dastardly fashion as de rigeur for any self-respecting Italian nobleman. Alfonso I d’Este married the infamous Lucrezia Borgia (who, before marrying Alfonso had made a name for herself for numerous affairs, possibly possibly even with her brother, as well as several murders), and his grandson, Alfonso II, had a wife who died in highly suspicious circumstances. circumstances. Browning does not specifically identify his Duke with any of these historical characters, but the atmosphere of intrigue, infidelity and murder, murder, provides a rich backdrop for the poem poem itself. It should also be noted that the Italian Renaissance is regarded as a period in which Western culture enjoyed a rebirth, when the Arts and Sciences flowered, and it seems we are being invited to reflect on the relationship between power, Art and morality.
The immediate setting of the poem is a grand palace (look up the Estense Castle for an idea of what it might look like), full of the most expensive expensive works of art. Although a party of some sorts sorts appears to be taking place at the time, the story is told in private, adding to the sense of claustrophobia claustrophobia and menace).
Top tip: tip: look closely at how Browning uses irony in this poem – the interest is clearly in how, despite the best efforts on the part of the speaker to impose one version of events, the story (and by implication the wife) resist him.
THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN The Story: Story: Hamelin, a city in Germany, is plagued by rats, a problem to which the townspeople and their leaders can find no solution, until a mysterious piper, dressed in motley clothes, appears and offers, for a fee, to rid the town of the the rats. This he does, driving them into the River Weser, but the mayor refuses to pay his fee, so the Piper gets his revenge by piping all the town’s children out and into a magical magica l kingdom under a mountain.
The voice: voice: the story is told in the third-person by a reflective, extra-diegetic narrator, who relates the story at some distance chronologically from from the events that took place. The narrator is limited, not knowing where the Piper went after leaving Hamelin, for example, example, but this fits with the nursery-rhyme nursery-rhyme quality of the poem, following the convention of such narratives that the narrator does not pretend to omniscience. omniscience . In contrast to Browning’s monologues the interest here is not in how the narrator struggles to control the narrative narrative they create and impose their meaning on it. Within the poem we hear several different voices, including those those of the mayor, the piper himself, a rat ‘stout as Julius Caesar’ and a child who, because bec ause he was lame, could not follow his playmates playmates into the mountain. mountain. The poem concludes with a direct address address to ‘Willy’ and a moral that we should be ‘wipers / Of scores out with all men’
The form: form: the story is told in a rhyming, loose iambic tetrameter which Browning adapts freely for different effects, such as the shift use of trochees at line 110-117 to evoke the tumbling, headlong swarm of rats. Look closely at the linguistic linguistic effects Browning achieves in this poem – there is plenty of word painting here, so be attentive to the use of onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance and other such techniques – read slowly and carefully when you are revising this poem. The poem itself is divided into sections, each of which relates one episode from the story, of varying length. Be aware in the end that this is, to all intents and purposes, a children’s story, so Browning’s choice of form and language are directed to making the narrative fit that end: the rhythmic liveliness, rich variety of sounds and sometimes s ometimes comically extreme rhymes (‘glutinous’ / ‘mutinous’, anyone?). anyone?) . If you choose to to write about this poem, poem, do look closely closely at language, as it is clearly Browning’s chief interest in how he tells this story – it becomes something to be enjoyed in and of itself alongside the events he narrates.
The structure: structure : as noted above, the poem begins and ends with remarks by the narrator in his own time, some five hundred years years after the events of described in the poem. poem. The narrator describes the story as a ‘ditty’, but ends but ends with the rather puzzling account of a tribe in Transylvania ‘of alien people’ who believe they are descended from people who rose ‘Out of some subterraneous prison’. Within the poem it follows the events of the story in chronological order.
The Setting: Setting: ‘Hamelin town’ is located in a very specific time and place, and is described as a ‘pleasanter spot’ than one you ever spied, but one ought to be suspicious of letting ourselves be bound to this historical setting, as the foolish, gluttonous mayor of Hamelin may also be read as a symbol of bad governance at any time – his sins are archetypal, unlike those of the Duke, whose crimes derive specifically from his personality. personality.
What’s interesting, with this poem, though, is the world of exotic settings that Browning that Browning s peaks of visiting ‘in Asia the introduces into the narrative with the figure of the Piper, who speaks Nizam’, freeing ‘the Cham’ in Tartary Tartary and being called called to assist the ‘Caliph’ in ‘Bagdat’. Through these settings, the Piper can be linked to the myt hological hological figure of the ‘Wandering Jew’, a man who, because he had cursed Christ, was damned to wander the Earth until Judgement Day, Day, but who had magical powers and could be called upon to assist those in need – the sceptical reader might see in the Piper’s vengeful response to the mayor’s refusal to pay him a hi nt of an anti Semitic stereotype.
Top Tip: Tip: when writing about this poem look really closely at language – you can do much worse than to explore how Browning uses language to paint the pictures of the events and to mimic their action in sound and poetic form.
PORPHYRIA ’S LOVER The Story: Story: a young man waits in his cottage for his beloved, who has stolen away from her rich family to see him. When she arrives, he murders her so he can possess her forever. forever.
The Voice: Voice: the story is told by the young lover himself, as a first-person, intra-diegetic narrator. narrator. In this poem, Browning creates the voice of a madman and and much of the poem’s dramatic intensity arises from the contrast between how he portrays the events of the story and how we, as rational, moral readers, react to them. The speaker in this poem has none of the Duke’s elegant refinement, but uses turbulent, violent language that evokes his deranged mental state. Tellingly, look at the change in how the speaker presents his own involvement in the story around line 32: up till this point he has been a passive observer (note the use of And … / And … And … / in i n lines 17-20, where events are merely relayed to us, fitted only into the most basic narrative; look, too at how he speaks of himself in the third person in line 15); however, at the point when ‘I knew / Porphyria worshipped me’ the voice becomes active, active , energetic and sexually charged. The fact that a murder can in such a dramatic way bring the speaker to life is central to the poem’s horrifying effect. Perhaps chillingly, there is a suggestion at times in the poem that the narrator is attempting the free indirect style of narrative, in which characters’ thoughts are articulated by the narrator without being directly demarcated demarcated as such. Look, for example at, ‘she, took weak for all her heart’s endeavour’, or, later when he claims her ‘smiling rosy little head’ is ‘So glad it has its utmost will.’ Where we would expect this style in a novel, in this poem the effect is really very disturbing, disturbing, not least because the woman’s voice (just as in My Last Duchess) is completely silenced by the narrator himself.
The Form: here, again, Browning uses iambs, but in tetrameter (four feet per line – pentameter has five feet), so the impression of a naturalistic speaking voice (and hence, a ‘real’ character) is created. However, the tetrameter is markedly markedly less ‘realistic’ than pentameter, pentameter, again a means by which Browning can create a sense of the uncanny in this poem. Look, also at his choice of rhyme-scheme; the ABABB form is unusual – it is asymmetrical asymmetrical and unbalanced, apparently twisting back on itself and becoming tangled up in its own sound: an indication, do you think, of the obsessive mental state of the protagonist?
The Structure: just as with My Last Duchess, The Patriot and The Bishop orders his tomb, Browning begins the narrative at the very climax of the story, reflecting his interest not in the causality of events within the story (where did the lovers meet, what attracted them to each other, how did their love unfold?) but in how a storyteller at the moment of crisis seeks to present the situation situation he is in. Significantly, Significantly, this poem, like The Patriot , actually concludes in the present tense, creating a sense of immediacy and chilling uncertainty about what the future holds. The poem begins with a retrospective account of ‘early toto -night’ and the subsequent arrival of Porphyria, which leads to a rather unsettling passage in which the speaker merely lists
what she does, without any comment or apparent emotional response, and concluding with the image of her ‘Murmuring how she loved me’ as his head rests on he r shoulder - a surprising image indeed, given our conventions of power relations relations within heterosexual relationships. This, as noted above, leads to a sudden awakening in the narrative voice and the flashback in which their relationship up to this point is alluded to (but only terms which the reader must mistrust: we’ve learned not to believe everything everything this narrator tells us by now). The poem’s final section begins at line 36 with the disturbing statement ‘I found a thi ng to do’, do’ , in which he strangles his lover and then rearranges them so that the earlier tableau (in which he lay on her shoulder) is now in its ‘proper’ position, where ‘this time my shoulder bore / Her head.’ The final line is very ambiguous – do we read it as a triumphal statement of victory, or possibly a brazen attempt at convincing himself that his actions are justified?
The Setting: It took some time for Browning to arrive at the final title for this poem, and each iteration has important implications implications for the setting. setting. Originally it was was called ‘Madhouse Cells’, implying that the narrative narrative takes place in a lunatic asylum. However, the final choice of title title is much more opaque and we are left with the indication only that this story takes place in a cottage by a lake. We are given no hint hi nt of in which country this story takes place, or even any idea of the period in which the story is set, but this is, is , I believe, intentional: intention al: Browning’s poem is a study in madness and delusion, and so we are invited to consider only the mind of a madman, not the society which produced him. Vividly drawn, though, though, is the setting around and within the cottage cottage itself. The opening lines, full of drama of drama and violent energy (does the word ‘early’ imply that the storm comes often?) are often cited as an example of pathetic fallacy, but to my mind they are more sophisticated than just being a visual representation representation of his tormented mood. Note the choice of descriptive language: language: the wind is ‘sullen’, and ‘tore the elmelm -tops down for spite’, even doing ‘its worst to vex the lake’. For all the violence here there is an equal degree of childish petulance, one of which, I suggest, the narrator is perhaps unaware (compare this to the irony employed by Browning in My Last Duchess).
Top Tip: Tip: irony is a significant and important aspect of this poem, such as in the ironies produced in the drama: his triumph at ‘gaining’ his love is mitigated by the fact she is dead, for example. When thinking about this poem, poem, look at how Browning subverts subverts the characteristics of a conventionally romantic narrative, one in which the beloved flees the restrictive ‘vainer ties’ and gives herself to her love ‘for ever’: ever’ : an interesting reading might look at the ways conventional representations of erotic love often require the woman to be subjugated to the man (especially in marriage) - has Browning taken a symbolic death and made it literal? If so, what are the implications for other romantic heroes?
FRA LIPPO LIPPI The Story: Story: a monk is caught outside a brothel and, being asked to account for himself, does so in the fullest terms, telling the story of his life and his career as an artist. Bro wning’ss most characterful and charismatic narrators, The Voice: Voice: Fra Lippo Lippi is one of Browning’ boldly beginning his narrative narrative with a defiant statement of who who he is. His voice is restless, ever shifting from thought to thought, lively and passionate. Look at Browning’s use of language in creating this voice: voice: the three separate clauses in line 3 alone; the breathless alliteration of ‘hunt 6-7; and the onomatopoeic it up, / Do – harry out’ in 6-7; onomatopoeic imitation of of the mouse in line 11. 11. This voice is certainly a long way from the Duke’s studied eloquence, but it is equally distant from the Lover’s disconcerting emptiness. emptiness. Lippi’s honesty is disarming, disarming, charming in its directness, such as when he notes the aptness of ‘that man’s’ face f or Judas, or in his admission that ‘I’m a beast, I know.’ His imagery is vital, full of life (who cannot but smile at the image of the girls ‘like ‘like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight) and full of unaffected delight in what the world has to offer, even a ‘breathless fellow … / Fresh from his murder.’ Lippi could never be described as an omniscient narrator, and it is clear that in this poem we are going to be given his very personal version of events, but by making his voice so honest and direct, Browning creates a relationship between him and the reader that is quite different to what we experience in reading My Last Duchess or Porphyria’s Lover . Where the Duke speaks in such a way as to prevent anyone else from speaking, and in consciousness, Fra Lippo Porphyria’s Lover no other voice intrudes into the narrator’s fevered consciousness, Lippi is alive with different voices, even if they are all reported to us by that of the painter himself. He interrupts his own narrative narrative with snatches of a rather bawdy song, song, and imitates the voices of ‘ of ‘the Prior and the learned’ as they offer their sanctimonious sanctimonious judgement of his first painting. These fragments fragments of of direct speech create a sense of lively drama within the poem, bringing to life the conflicts, triumphs and disasters of Lippi’s varied life. The Form: another dramatic monologue, monologue, but in this case, written in blank verse, that is, unrhymed iambic pentameters. pentameters. Browning here seems to wish to turn his poetry poetry entirely to the service of bringing Lippi’s voice to life: life : look again at 260 – 269, in which Browning’s control of iambic pentameter is so complete that we hardly notice the form of the verse when listening to Lippi’s tirade against the hypocrisy of the conventional Christian view of the human body. The Structure: Structure: Browning’s method in this poem is characteristic of his dramatic monologues, as the story of Lippi’s life is framed by events in the immediate immediate present. In this case, the poem begins and ends with the encounter between Lippi and the night watch, but at line 44, he begins a brief account of being shut up ‘three weeks … within my mew / AA -painting for the great man’ (look, too, at the wit of ‘saints and saints / And saints again’) and how he pursued the ‘three slim shapes’ who passed passed beneath beneath his window. The whole story here is full of excitement and adventure, and Browning surprises us with t he frankness of Lippi’s admission, ‘flesh and blood, / That’s all I’m made of.’ From line 80 Lippi’s narrative returns to his infancy and the story o f how ‘One fine frosty day’ he was taken to the convent, where he ‘did renounce the world, its pride and greed’ (a telling moment in the narrative, especially given the later behaviour of the monks). Lines 102 – 110 recount his early education (‘pure waste’, as Lippi puts it, before recalling his favourite Latin word, ‘amo’). At line 113 he returns to his childhood, but here to recount the vivid experiences experiences
by which he learned ‘the look of things’ – how to judge people’s character from outward appearances. His painting career career begins at around 130, when he decorates ‘the antiphonary’s verge’ (the margins of a large book of music), music) , and despite the anger of the monks, the Prior sees in him ‘our man of parts’, who can ‘do our church up fine’ to match other monastic orders in Florence. At 143 Lippi, with characteristic characteristic scorn for propriety and ceremony, ceremony, begins to ‘daub away’, and he says of his painting, ‘Never was such prompt disemburdening.’ This is a significant moment in the structure of the poem, not only for Lippi’s biography, biography, but because it introduces the debate about the role of the artist which is to be so significant later: for Lippi painting is a means of self-expression, whereby the creative impulse must be satisfied through external productivity. productivity. (You will find the contrasting view expressed in the Prior’s complaint that Lippi must ‘paint the souls of men’ (183)). The painting itself itself takes on its own story, story, one which appears to bear no relation to its real subject-matter: for Lippi, the interest lies in the character in the scene, from ‘good old gossips’ to ‘the breathless fellow … / Fresh from his murder’ and ‘his victim’s son’, who cannot kill him. This little scene is typical of Browning’s use of embedded embedded narratives in this story: it is no more than hinted at, sketched in only the lightest detail; elsewhere they are even more tantalising (what is the significance of ‘the Prior’s niece who comes / To care about his asthma’ – is she his daughter? A prostitute?) – certainly they add to the vivid atmosphere of the poem. Back to the structure. By line 165 he shows shows his ‘covered bit of cloister cloister--wall’, to great acclaim from the monks, who praise the work’s realism and verisimilitude (having th e appearance of being real), but when the ‘Their betters took their turn to see and say’ (never has the pretentious appreciat appreciation ion of fine art been so adroitly punctured) punctured) Lippi is criticised for being too real. His business is not ‘homage to the perishable clay’ but ‘to paint the souls of men’ (which leads to a heated discussion of what the soul looks looks like). Always look out for for examples of irony, such as when the Prior complains about ‘that about ‘that white smallish female with the breasts’, breasts’ , whom he initially identifies as his ‘niece’, and only later calls ‘Herodias’ (a telling detail – Herodias was daughter to king Herod). There follows twenty lines or so of debate about what it means to paint the soul, and Lippi’s desire to ‘take breath and try to add life’s f lash / And then add soul and heighten them three-fold,’ three-fold,’ and to admit that ‘simple beauty’ is ‘about the best thing God invents’. From 225 – 230 we return to the present, where Lippi draws our (and that of the night watch) attention to the Medici palace, whose ‘great rings’ symbolise the protection he has received from the ‘friend’ within. However, at 231 he continues his discussion of how his art has been received, with the chilling image of the ‘old grave eyes … / peeping over my shoulder’, and the complaint that his work is ‘art’s decline’, decline’ , a sentiment perhaps more proper to a Victorian schoolroom than 15 th century Florence, but telling nonetheless, especially given the pressure Lippi feels himself under to bear comparison with ‘the true painters’ of history. His reaction to this marks a surprising change in the tone of the poem – he ‘suck s his lips in tight and paint / To please them.’ (Note here, too the echo of o f the ‘disemburdening’ earlier in the poem). There follows between 250 and 270 270 a fierce criticism of the attitude held by the church to the human body and the contradictions inherent within it – it – ‘Do they like grass or no? … All I want’s the thing / Settled.’ The next ten lines offer a vision of the future, embodied in ‘Guidi’, ‘Guidi’, ‘apace’ . From 280, Lippi who ‘lets the monks talk’ but paints ‘apace’. Lippi ceases to tell the story story of his life but of fers fers an impassioned defence of his view of art, ho w ‘the beauty and the wonder and the power’ of the world should be painted, because ‘we love [things] / First when we see t hem painted’ even if we have passed ‘a ‘a hundred times.’ This view of art, whereby the painter creates a more perfect vision of man ma n and nature, and in which the artist reveals ‘truth’ (296) and ‘lends
[his] mind out’ (307) conform to the image of the artist as a spiritual s piritual hierophant proposed proposed by Shelley, quite unlike the utilitarian view proposed p roposed by the Prior, who wants art to ‘instigate to prayer.’ From 320 – 330, however, Lippi introduces the voice of a monk at Prato, where he ‘splashed the fresco in fine style’, whose anecdote seems to confirm Lippi’s beliefs: the fresco of St Laurence has has inspired such powerful feelings in the ‘pious people’ who come to see it, that they have scratched the faces off the solders depicted turning the saint ‘off saint ‘off his toasted side.’ From 335 to the end Browning returns Lippi’s narrative to the present. Lippi excuses his outburst, blaming ‘this spicy night which turns / The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!’ and begging not to be ‘misreported’: in another chilling allusion to a story not told here, he says ‘The t o read Lippi’s narrative in a much broader context church knows.’ knows.’ Details such as this invite us to of church politics and repression. Hence the poem’s conclusion: a painting ‘to make amends’, depicting a lyrical, beautiful image of heaven, including Lippi himself, abashed for his ‘old serge th is pure company’, but protected and defended by ‘a ‘ a sweet angelic slip gown and rope rope … / in … this of a thing,’ who says to God ‘He made you and devised you … / Though he’s none of you.’ Quite how literally we are to take this is ambiguous, to what extent we should read rea d the ‘devised’ as referring to the painting only, or to God in general, unclear. The final fifteen lines of the poem combine the two competing sides of Lippi’s of Lippi’s life: he is saved in his painting by St Lucy, just as he was saved when once he was surprised by a ‘hothead husband’ while playing ‘hot cockles’ with the Prior’s niece. The poem concludes with a glance to the future, when the poem will be complete ‘six months hence.’ Setting: Setting: Again, Browning turns to Renaissance Italy for this poem, to a s pecific city and even, in this case, a relatively specific specific period of time (the middle decades of the 15th century, judging by how Lippi speaks of his career as being fairly well advanced by this this stage). Whereas in My Last Duchess the setting evokes a general mood, the spirit of the Renaissance where artistic genius went hand-in-hand with dynastic might and cruelty, in this poem Browning prefers to focus on the (relatively) well-documented struggle struggle of an artist of passionate and lively temperament working within the constrictions of of monastic life. Lippi is an apt choice of character to explore this scenario: Vasari’s Lives of the Artists records accounts of him being captured by pirates, and even abducting a beautiful young young woman whose portrait he wished to use for the figure of the Madonna. While Browning avoids reference reference to these, he does refer to documented documented paintings, such as Lippi’s famo famous us cycle of frescoes in Prato, as a means of developing Lippi’s character, character, and inviting the reader to engage with the way an abstract debate about the nature of art (should it be a means of personal expression or should it serve a practical purpose?) affects affects a fully developed character, as well as criticising the hypocrisy and shamelessness of the Catholic Church at the time. life -story is told to men of the The immediate setting of the narrative is a surprising one: Lippi’s life-story night-watch outside a brothel ‘at an alley’s end’, ‘past midnight’, hardly the place for a man whose monastic vows made ‘him swear to never kiss the girls’! girls’ ! The close, evocative evocative atmosphere atmosphere of a ‘spicy night’ which ‘turns the head like Chianti wine’ , as well as the ambiguous ending (a ‘grey beginning’ – is this a sign of hope or of despair?) add tension to the passion and occasionally fierce anger of Lippi’s na rrative. Top Tip: Tip: when writing about this poem, don’t get too distracted by all the rather heavy debate about Art; look at the exciting use of language to convey Lippi’s passionate nature.
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED’S CHURCH The Story: Story: A Bishop, lying on his death bed, gives the final instructions for his tomb to his sons, which must be grander and more impressive than that of Gandolf, his predecessor and rival.
Voice and Form: Form: A dramatic monologue monologue told by the Bishop, an intra-dieget i ntra-diegetic, ic, first-person narrator, in blank verse. As with so many of Browning’s narratives, the interest interest here lies not in what happens, but in how a character c haracter tells a story, how they seek to shape the narrative to present themselves themselves to the best advantage. In this case, however, the Bishop is rapidly losing control of his faculties, and, and, by the end of the poem, is no longer in control of his story. The use of blank verse (unrhymed, iambic pentameter) pentameter) creates a very ‘natural’ sense of voice, and Browning’s deliberate deliberate avoidance of self-consciously self- consciously ‘poetic’ gestures creates an engaging contrast between the high status of the s peaker and his ‘low’ rhetorical style. Just as with Fra Lippo Lippi, poetic techniques are used to create a powerful sense of character – look at the anger suggested by the alliterative ‘s’ sounds in line 18, contrasted with the more peaceful, lyrical mood created by the the enjambment between 22-23. 22-23. Much of the interest in the poem is created by the contradictions and paradoxes within the speaker’s speaker’ s character: for a churchman ‘fresh-poured red wine his enjoyment of sensual imagery (look at lines 29, 44 and 60-61 , or the ‘fresh-poured of a mighty pulse in line 30 – hardly the perfect sacrifice of the Eucharist), and his apparent disregard for matters of the spirit, surprise the reader. Indeed, much of the imagery of the poem is overtly pagan: Pan, Nymphs, Bacchus, Cicero (called ‘Tully’ in the poem) all evoke sensuality, luxury and Roman decadence. However, his language also draws h eavily on Biblical and religious rhetoric, as in the opening statement, and the image of the ‘weaver’s shuttle’ in line 51. For all his love of good Latin, though, this speaker can be petulant and neurotic, occasionally using direct questions to challenge the audience of sons (itself a surprisingly honest admission: the term ‘nephews’ would have been sufficient to indicate he was the boys’ father) and the frequent concern for Anselm (why is he ‘keeping back’?) suggest a story which the Bishop will not tell us, a gap in the narrative. He is a character whose self-awareness is ambiguous, ambiguous, treading a line between Lippi’s disarming honesty when he admits, ‘evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage’, the Lover’s self -deception when he describes Saint Praxed’s church as ‘the c hurch for peace’, and the Duke’s outright duplicity in his claim he ‘deserved the prize’. As so often, Browning’s use of irony is key to understanding how this story is told: what the speaker says rarely if ever actually means what he thinks it does. we’re back in Renaissance Italy, this time in Rome, in a real place (the Setting: Setting: Funnily enough, we’re church of Santa Prassede) but a less specific time-frame, that of the 16 th century. Just as with My Last Duchess and Fra Lippo Lippi this setting serves to foreground questions of morality, taste, honesty and power to which Browning Browning returns so many times in his poetry. The church here does not represent salvation, peace or redemption but a site of conflict, envy and greed, where pagan erotic sensuality is placed next to, and even spills over i nto Christian theology – is Saint Praxed’s ‘glory’ merely religious, when placed next to Pan, symbol of lust and sexual potency, ‘ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off.’ The physical environment of the poem is full of signs of wealth and power: the Frascati villa and the ‘white‘white-grape vineyard’ all bespeak the Bishop’s desire for material wealth, but also have a
wider significance, echoing images images used by Christ in Gospels. The image of the vineyard recalls the parable of the wicked husbandmen from Matthew 21: 33-46, in which Christ uses the image of a vineyard to represent God’s kingdom on earth; the owner of the vineyard sends overseers to make sure the farmers are looking after the vineyard properly, properly, but the farmers keep killing the overseers. The parable illustrates how mankind’s greed causes them to reject God and those sent by him (the prophets and Jesus). The irony here is that the Bishop is behaving just like the evil husbandmen in the parable. All the signs of wealth in the poem recall Christ’s many warnings about the corrupting power of wealth and how it separates man from God (think of the simile of the camel and the eye of a needle). Yet the Bishop appears appears untroubled untroubled by this. Structure: Structure : just as with Porphyria’s Lover , this is a narrative which takes place during, but right at the very end of the story, but whereas Porphyria offers only one brief flashback in which her background is alluded to, The Bishop Orders his Tomb is chronologically confused, slipping between recollections of the mother, Gandolf, and other occasions occasions in the Bishop’s life. For Browning this is an essential means of conveying the sense of a confused, disorientated mind, seeking to produce a commanding narrative of his own life, but incapable of doing so. Yet just as Porphyria’s Lover ends on a cliff-hanger, awaiting the ‘word’ God may or may not speak, The Bishop ends at a beginning, as the story here is not just about how the Bishop lived his life, but how he will live on after his death. This is of evident concern to him, so that his tomb will outdo that of Gandolf, and will present him properly to posterity – he does not want to be ‘bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine. travertine .’ This chronology serves two important purposes: the story the Bishop wishes to tell through his tomb is one over which he can have no control, hence the increasing anxiety in his voice, such as at line 104. The second purpose is to question question the Christian Bishop’s relationship with his own afterlife: the Bible tells him to “store up goods in Heaven, … where thieves do not break through nor steal”, yet the Bishop has been assiduous in storing up his earthly goods, such as the lump of lapis lazuli, ‘Big as a Jew’s head’ , which is ‘Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves fig- leaves soft.’
Top Tip: Tip: This may seem a daunting poem, but it is a fascinating one for the study of storytelling, because it is such an interesting combination combination of character, setting and themes. As you read it, ask yourself if you find the Bishop disturbing or pitiable?
