ROBERT BROWNING Browning was one of the best writers\producers of dramatic monologues. The dramatic monologue was born in 1842 with “Rudel with the lady of Tripoli”. The dramatic monologue was born because the Victorian theatre was based on the system of the actor\manager. The actor manager was the main actor, the manager, and also the director. The Victorian theatre didn’t have state founding, so the money was all private. So the Victorian theatre had two tendencies: the first was to steal play from France. In fact was typical for actor to translate french plays and to adapt they into the English stage. For this reason the Victorian age is also known as the age of adaptation. The second tendency was to steel a French or an English novel, in fact there wasn’t copyright. So there were several poets that wanted to create a new type of theatre similar to the Shakespearean theatre. One of them was Browning and his model was Shakespeare. The dramatic monologue needs a poetical voice with a very precise identity, but also a silent listener. “Rudel with the lady of Tripoli” is the first experiment of Browning in this new type of theatre. At the first the poet Rudel is creating an image of Mount Blanc, in a very complex way. It is a symbol of something unmovable that is kissed by the sun. The sun is a metaphor for the poet, while the mountain symbolizes the lady. He remembers all the things that he has loves most in his life: for exemplary the vision of the Mount Blanc. Then he decries a sunflower which is a personification of himself. Then he talks abound the Mount Blanc and says that the Mount has many names, as the beauty. In fact the mount is a metaphor of beauty, which is a symbol of the Lady of Tripoli. The sunflower is a symbol of the poet, a flower that dies, a flower that is consumed by his love for beauty which is the sun. The second stanza is addressed to the lady, and Rudel called her Angel of the east, both because she lives in Tripoli, but also because she is the angel dawn, the angel of new day and a new life. The last stanza is addressed to the pilgrim and Rudel talks about an object he made for the lady: its waven picture. This picture is a metaphor for poetry. Many critics considered Browning and Tennyson as the third generation of romantics. ALFRED TENNYSON King Arthur was the symbol Of the perfect king, and he was a big symbol among the romantics and the Victorians. The image of King Arthur as the perfect king and of Camelot as the perfect court was to become a myth with the Tudors, especially with Henry 8. The big rebirth of this myth takes place during the Victorian age, and one of the most important bodies of this period was “the returned Camelot”. Tennyson dedicated his work not to Queen Victoria, but to King Albert, her husband because Victoria was a woman so she was out of place and couldn’t embody the myth of King Arthur. King Arthur and his Knights also embodied the perfect gentlemen. He becomes a symbol of what a man should be. The first poem that Tennyson composed of this collection was the death of Arthur, “the passing of Arthur”, composed in 1833 and he has reworked this poem for 30 years. Plot. Arthur takes place on the throne In The first poem of the collection, which is called “the coming of Arthur”. Then he gets Excalibur which is the most important symbol of the whole collection. Excalibur symbolizes a lot of things, but first of all: power. Then follow several others poems that narrated the stories of Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde. The tone of “the passing of Arthur” is typical of elegy, and the story is told by Sir Bedivere, an old men and the last survivor of the round table. Tennyson interpreted the legend of King in a strongly metaphysical way, and the “the passing of Arthur” is something that is strongly related with Tennyson strong conception of religion, that God and Men are one. CRISTINA ROSSETTI During her life, Cristina was famous for her poem “Goblin Market”, which is a very long poem, a sort of a fairy tale and it’s also one of the first examples of fantasy. The inventor of fantasy was George Mc Donald with his novel “Phontastics”, which is a sort of “Lord of Ring”. In Victorian age the fantasy was a mixture of fairy tales and legends, and they had a very symbolic meaning. Cristina Rossetti also has very strong Christian undertones in her poem “goblin market”,and Crist figure is here a woman. In fact Cristina was a feminist the the age in which she lived. Goblin Market is very Christian and the theme of the poem is that about prostitution and feminism whips strongly related to her work. In fact Cristina worked in a female penitentiary in which she was known as Sister Cristina. The story is a fairy tale and there are two sister. The family is just composed of them, Laura and Lizzy. They live in a country and near their house There is a market that is hold by goblins. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Love and death is the most important topic in poetry of the Victorian age, and it’s also the main theme in Sudden light. It’s a very short poem, composed just by 3 stanzas, each stanza is composed by 5 lines. The rhyme scheme is ABABA. “Sudden light” is one of the most pre raphaelite poem of the all, and it is about the realization of the eternity of love. Dante Gabriel Rossetti tries to explain in a very supernatural way the experience of dejavu, the language is very easy, but the situation and the poetical allusions are very complex. Rossetti puts the reader in a certain situation with very powerful deictic , which is “here”. We don’t know what this “here” means, but we learn it by allusions, in fact we are in a seaside resort. So, in the first stanza he describes a dejavu. We are near the sea in a sort of twilight situation. It’s not completely dark but it’s not full day. Twilight is also the boundary between day and night, but also between live and death. The second stanza is full of details, and a one point the poet remembers. The “veil” means the truth. In the last stanza death is personified and the poet talks about eternal love and makes also allusions to sex. It’s a romantic poem. THOMAS HARDY “The Workbox” is completely opposite to “Sudden light”. This poem deals with death and love and it was written in 1914. It’s composed by 10 stanzas and each stanza contains 4 lines with ABAB rhyme scheme. Even if this two poems deals with the same theme, they are different. Hardy is very positivistic in his out outlook and he is very scientific. He also dislike the idea of an afterlife
