The Life of Robert Browning: A Critical Biography (Blackwell Critical Biographies)

Clyde Ryals's account explores Browning's work from his earliest published poem, "Pauline", to his last volume, "Asolando". It examines, chronologically and at length, his entire literary output, and aims to set Browning firmly within the context of his poems and his times. Browning has always been regarded as a dramatic poet who stands at an objective distance from his writing. Professor Ryals, however, proposes a different view, and presents him as a writer who was both objective and subjective. He shows how each poem is, as Browning termed it, a performance in which the poet plays a part - as producer, presenter, or actor, and sometimes all three. We discover the role each poetic performance played in Browning's own "self-fashioning" and learn how the principle of endless becoming stood at the very heart of his thought and practice as a poet.