Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
All Theses
Browning's fascination with the senses and the mind as determiners of reality floods his work. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,' in particular, offers a more complicated, sincere exploration of this topic that had become central to Victorian debate. As Browning acknowledges repeatedly through his poetry, the debate between sensory data (empiricism) and supersensory belief (idealism) could not be understood in clear-cut categories. In much of his poetry, however, he grounds these questions in deceptively simple discussions of mesmerism or the Victorian philosophy of the mind. Although those two topics may seem disparate to twenty-first century readers, Victorian belief …