Robert Browning: A Dramatic Monologue Marvel

Abstract

One of the most effective literary devices within different didactic and aesthetic forms is the dramatic monologue. The dramatic monologue distinguishes the speaker’s character from that of the poet’s. The double meaning that lies at the heart of the dramatic monologue, conveys the speaker’s version or variety of meaning and intentions. The Dramatic monologue has been practiced for a very long time, but it was Robert browning who invested it with a deeper level of meaning giving it frequency in an attempt to support preexisting aesthetic values in favor of a poem that valued form over content. Although such a dialogue is called dramatic, it is not a theatrical device, proper. The speaker of the poem delivers such comments on the slice of life at disposal that would leave us with a deep emotional experience. By listening to the words pouring out of the speaker’s mind, the reader/listener obtains a psychoanalytic view of the speaker. The current article aims to study Robert browning, the prominent Victorian poet, by putting on the pedestal his essential role in investing the dramatic monologue in English literature with an essential poetic significance and role by reviewing a number of his major poems.