Browning and Higher Criticism

Abstract

Amid the shifting cross currents of religious controversy in England during the middle years of the nineteenth century, there are few points of view equal in freshness and interest to that of Browning. Nor among his brother poets of the Victorian age is there one whose work throws more light on the typical attitude of the English mind in relation to philosophy and religion. Individualism, subjectivity, lack of systematic development, absence of radicalism,—attributes which have been singled out as eminently characteristic of English speculative thought in the nineteenth century—are strikingly illustrated in Browning's representation of the religious problems of the mid-Victorian era.