'He did not Sit Five Minutes': The Conversion of Gigadibs

Abstract

Ever since its first publication in Men and Women in 1855, 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' has been recognized as one of Browning's most intricate and ambitious shorter poems. Because of the extreme subtlety of the poem, however, critics have spent their time discussing its philosophical and rhetorical difficulties, and this emphasis has meant that many basic questions about the poem still remain unanswered. To this day no fully satisfactory solutions to the following four problems have been offered: is there a historical model for Gigadibs; when was the poem written; where is the poem set and what is the importance of this setting; and why did Browning write the poem when he did. By presenting in this paper substantial new information in an attempt to answer these problems, I hope to correct some generally accepted misinterpretations of the poem.