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Browning And Music: A Study Of Robert Browning's Use Of Musical Structuring Principles To Unify The Dramatic Monologues Of The Men And Women Of 1863 And The Ring And The Book, John Joseph Joyce

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Robert Browning often insisted that he had studied music seriously and that he knew what he was about when he talked of or wrote about music. Moreover, he claimed that he had given “much attention to music proper…to the detriment of what people take for ‘music’ in his poetry.” Nonetheless, there has persisted among critics a nagging challenge as to the accuracy and depth of musical knowledge which Browning employed in fusing musical elements to poetry. My dissertation takes up this question with the aim of proving the validity of Browning’s claims.

I begin by concentrating upon Browning’s “Music Poems” …