Introduction

Abstract

In many ways, Robert Browning seems an unlikely Victorian to be acknowledged as a major influence on modem poetry. The stereotypical image of Browning as a jolly dinner-guest with white hair and ruddy complexion is often reflected in the poetry itself with its atmosphere of hearty enthusiasm. For twentieth-century readers, this exuberance may seem insensitive, and is certainly contrary to what is usually taken to be the spirit of modem poetry. Browning, like his Victorian contemporaries, indulged his appetite for lengthy discussions of philosophy and religion in even lengthier poems. And although he offers the psychologically sophisticated reader detailed explorations of individual characters, these explorations lack the background sense of the forces of society on the individual so keenly presented by modem poets.