ROBERT BROWNING
& THOMAS HARDY
Visions of Fin de Siècle
OUTLINE
1. Introduction: Quest & Anti-Quest
2. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
Came”
3. “The Convergence of the Twain”
4. Next Time: Alice in Wonderland
QUEST & ANTIQUEST
Quest (M-W Dictionary)
1: a journey made in search of something;
2: a long and difficult effort to find or do
something
3: [literature]a chivalrous enterprise in medieval
romance usually involving an adventurous journey
(for the Holy Grail or rescuing a lady in distress)
Romantic Quest –for Nature, Love, Art and
Individual Freedom
• One with
Nature
Wordsworth
Wordsworth
• Strengths &
Pleasing
thoughts in
memories
• Primal
Sympathy; with
still sad music
of humanity
Wordsworth
Art, Nature, Love and Individualism
Coleridge, etc.
• Nature &
the
Supernatur
al sublime
Byron, Shelley,
Keats
• Romantic
Love
Byron
• Byronic
Hero,
transcen
ding
human
boundar
ies
Keats &
Shelley
• Artistic
Immortality
vs. Human
Mortality
EXPRESSION OF
DOUBTS
In Memoriam
I
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
EXPRESSION OF
DOUBTS
LIV
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
…Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
EXPRESSION OF
DOUBTS
LVI
'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
…And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—
…Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills? …Behind the veil, behind the veil.
VICTORIAN ANTIQUEST
Victorian
Nature
Anti-Quest -- Nature desolate
“Childe Roland”
Alice’s “Garden”
Love
Artistic Vision
Jane Eyre – marriage
Pre-Raphaelitism – Medievalism
Aestheticism – Art for Art’s Sake
Individual Freedom NO Quest or – Women and Men in
Journey
waiting or death
“Mariana” “Tinthonus” “Song” “Shalott”
“Childe Roland”
Alice’s Adventure
Robert Browning (1812 –1889)
CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK
TOWER CAME
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came painted by Thomas Moran in 1859
(Wikipedia)
“CHILDE ROLAND”
- BACKGROUND 1) Title: from Shakspeare’s King Lear. In the play, Gloucester's
son, Edgar, lends credence to his disguise as Tom o' Bedlam by
talking nonsense, of which this is a part:
Child Rowland to the dark tower came,
His word was still 'Fie, foh, and fum
I smell the blood of a British man.
King Lear, Act 3, scene 4 (Wikipedia)
2) Browning: ``Childe Roland …`came upon me as a kind of
dream. I had to write it, then and there, and I finished it the
same day, I believe. But it was simply that I had to do it. I did
not know then what I meant beyond that, and I'm sure I don't
know now.'‘ (qtd Korg)
“CHILDE ROLAND”
- BACKGROUND 3) Is the poem’s moral “he that endureth to the end shall be
saved”? “Yes, just about that” (qtd Poston 437) . Browning
denies identification with his monologuist at one point, but
admits having “his true person” in all of them (Poston 438) .
CHILDE ROLAND: SUMMARY1-FOLLOW THE CRIPPLE’S
SUGGESTION
Stanza
Main Ideas
1
The cripple lied; he suppressed his glee in find one more
victim in me. [Why follows his suggestion?]
2
The cripple: “skull-like” laugh and writes my epitaph for
fun.
3
I turned onto the track he suggested, feeling neither pride
nor hope about the end of the journey.
4 My hope dwindled into a ghost; I expected failure.
5-6 I am like a dying man … hearing the others saying good7
bye and arranging my funeral. [“Forbidding Mourning”]
I had suffered in this quest and heard failure foretold (like
the others in the Band).
CHILDE ROLAND: SUMMARY-2
NATURE &A HORSE
Stanza
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Main Ideas
I took the path in a dreary sunset.
The safe road vanished as soon as I took the turn, with only a
grey plain surrounding me.
“starved ignoble” nature described.
Penury, inertness, grimace
Nature: “I cannot help my case.” It’s the last judgment.
The thistle-stalk that rises above its maters has its head
chopped; the bents “jealous.” What made these holes and
rents in the leaves which deny greenness? A brute pashing
their lives out… [denial of individualism]
Grass—scant as “hair in leprosy”; a stiff blind horse
The horse: I never saw a brute I hated so.
CHILDE ROLAND:
SUMMARY-3 THE PAST
VS. THE PRESENT
Stanza
Main Ideas
15
I turned my eyes inward and tried to remember some
heroic past.
16
But no– I saw Cuthbert’s reddening face …”one night’s
disgrace” leaves my heart cold
17
18
Giles – honest man turned to traitor
19
Better this present –in the darkening path. Something
arrest smy thoughts.
A river appears like a serpant– bath for the fiend…
20
So petty yet so spiteful! The trees along it are “suicidal”
21
Walking thru’ the river, I “set my foot upon a dead man's
cheek”
CHILDE ROLAND:
SUMMARY-4 LANDSCAPE OF
WAR & DESTRUCTION
Stanza
Main Ideas
22
Not a better country on the other bank: with strugglers in war,
“Toads in a poisoned tank,/Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage”
[images of torture]
23
24
More images of war and torture “Christians against Jews.”
25
Nature reduced to its elements: “now mere earth
Desperate and done with; …Bog, clay and rubble, sand and
stark black dearth. “
Nature reduced to its elements: Now patches where some
leanness of the soil's/Broke into moss or substances like boils;
26
More images of war and torture “wheel,/Or brake, not wheel that harrow fit to reel/Men's bodies out like silk?”
CHILDE ROLAND:
SUMMARY-5 ENDING?
27 And just as far as ever from the end!
-- a black bird as the guide
28 Plains give way to mountains:
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.” –[Prelude: stolen
boat scene]
29 Near despair, Roland finds himself “inside the den”
30 Burningly it came on me all at once, with mountains on its side…
Calls himself “Dotard”
31 The tower described --
32 Not see? The hills are like “giants at a hunting” announcing his
killing
Not hear? “Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.”
34 I announced my arrival
A bur r (毛刺) had been a
t r e a s u r e - t r ove .
… c o ck l e ( 蜊 ) , s p u r g e ( 大 戟 )
Might propagage their kind…
CHILDE ROLAND:
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Lilian -- How is Nature described? With images of
torment, punishment and disease? Personified? With
its broken parts taking human attibutes?
“horse, his every bone a-stare”; oak with “a cleft in
him/Like a distorted mouth”; tower with “turret,
blind as the fool's heart,”
2. David -- What can be the symbolic meanings of an
old blind horse, a rusty wheel (that seems to be an
instrument of torture), and a black bird (that Roland
takes as an omen of death)?
3. Cindy Chang -- Do we get to understand Roland
through this dramatic monologue (as we do the Duke
thru’ “My Last Duchess”)? Is his a mental journey?
4. Delilah -- Or maybe the poem is an allegory of the
age?
CHILDE ROLAND: POSSIBLE
INTERPRETATIONS
1. Journey:
-- a quest in fin de siècle for something unknown—a
circular and non-stop quest;
-- for poetic career, only Nature is no longer inspiring;
-- a quest for self-knowledge.
2. Roland’s last act: an “inner victory through endurance
and self-discipline” (Korg), or that of acknowledging
defeat and death.
Last stanza -There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'
“CONVERGENCE OF THE
TWAIN”
(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")
Thomas Hardy 1840–1928
THOMAS HARDY
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Famous for his novels such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and
Jude the Obscure
Hardy turned to poetry because of the criticism on his novels,
"The Darkling Thrush“ (1900)—”elegy for the nineteenth
century”; --(skylark, nightingale "an aged thrush, frail, gaunt,
and small.“)
"Neutral Tones'" and "A Broken Appointment“– about failed
love.
"Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave"
“Hap” And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
“THE CONVERGENCE
OF THE TWAIN”
1.
“Convergence” (1915) -- The Titanic was a luxurious ocean
liner that sank on April 14, 1912. The ship had been
proclaimed unsinkable due to a number of safety features—
including a series of closeable watertight compartments. It was
quite unexpected when it was learned that the ship encountered
an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm during its maiden
voyage. Over 1500 people lost their lives in the tragedy.
(reference)
2.
3.
Form: three-line stanza – tercet in the shape of the ocean liner.
“Hardy was asked to write a poem to be read at a charity
concert to raise funds in aid of the tragedy disaster fund. It was
first published as part of the souvenir program for that event.”
(Wikipedia)  Is it a sympathetic poem? An elegy?
“THE CONVERGENCE
OF THE TWAIN”
1.
2.
3.
4.
What tone does the speaker take?
How and why are the Titanic and iceberg
personified?
Besides its being a sexual union, how does the
poem explain this collision (or encounter)
between human artifact and nature? (“The
Immanent/Will that stirs and urges everything“;
“Spinner of the Year”) And why?
How does the poetic form convey its meanings?
(tercet, inverted syntax, sets of opposites in
stanzas 1-5; two long sentences in stanzas 6-11.)
“THE CONVERGENCE
OF THE TWAIN”:
SUMMARY
stanza
1
2
She lies deep in the sea, away from “human vanity”
Steel chambers…turns to tidal lyres
3
sea-worm crawls (“grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent”)
over mirrors
Jewels – “lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black
and blind.”
4
5.
Dim moon-eyed fishes ask why she is here
“THE CONVERGENCE
OF THE TWAIN”:
SUMMARY 2
stanza
6
7
8
9
10
11
While the “creature of cleaving wing” was being fashion
“the immanent will” also prepares a sinister mate for her:
the iceberg.
No mortal eye could see the “welding” of their history,
or sign of their being “twin halves” till “the Spinner of
the Year” said “Now.”
ALICE IN
WONDERLAND
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Allusions to a) events in Alice Liddel’s family
and childhood, b) contemporary social customs
and ideologies, c) Lewis Carroll's interest in logic,
nursery rhymes, nonsense poem and mathematics.
Pay attention to Alice’s changes, their causes and
how she adapts to them.
The use (and abuse) of animals
Any other possible references to social customs
and girl’s education.
Is this a quest (for garden)?
References
Korg, Jacob. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came:
Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D. L.
Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
POSTON , LAWRENCE . “Browning and the Altered
Romantic Landscape.” Victorian Imagination. U. C.
Knoepflmacher, G. B. Tennyson Eds U of California P,
1977: 426-39.
Gilligan, Kathleen E. “Redefining the Elegy in the
Twentieth Century: Thomas Hardy's The Convergence of the
Twain And Sylvia Plath's Daddy”