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ABSTRACT
It has often been argued that Browning's poems, culminating in the form of the dramatic monologue, evince a rejection of the authoritative authorial voice and insist on the elusiveness of objective truth. Indeed, Browning repeatedly presents human speech as inherently flawed, distinct from the religious idea of the efficacious Word and intrinsically inferior to it. However, the Word, in its various senses, is of major importance to Browning's thought and work: he questions it, emulates it and appropriates it, and always in relation to the authority and truth value of poetic language. References to the Word in “An Epistle … of Karshish”, “A Death in the Desert”, The Ring and the Book and “Fust and his Friends” reveal Browning's appropriation of the authoritative Word within poetic language, with the effect of granting his poetry religious authority, juxtaposed with the nineteenth century crisis of biblical authority taking place in the background.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Browning, The Ring and the Book, 627–8.
2 See, for example, Hair, 7; Woolford, ed., Robert Browning, 84; Hawlin, 192.
3 Martens, 3.
4 Browning, Essay on Shelley, 50.
5 Ruskin, 36: xxiv.
6 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 60.
7 Ibid., 60.
8 Ibid., 87.
9 Ibid., 87.
10 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 342.
11 Browning, Works of Robert Browning. All the Browning references, unless otherwise stated, are to this edition which corresponds to Browning's final edition of 1888, and are given parenthetically in the text.
12 Eliade, ed., Encyclopaedia of Religion, 440.
13 John 1.1, English Standard Version.
14 Hart, 1.
15 Hair, 3.
16 Woolford and Karlin, 204.
17 Woolford, Karlin and Phelan, 718.
18 Ong, 182.
19 Ibid., 183.
20 Numbers 12:8.
21 Manor, 187–201.
22 Ong, 184.
23 Vance, viii.
24 Ong, 185.
25 Woolford, Karlin and Phelan, 714.
26 Renan, 14.
27 DeVane, 296.
28 Whitla, 37.
29 Shaffer, 207.
30 Gruber, 340.
31 Dupras, 105.
32 Roberts, 47–60.
33 Ibid., 58.
34 A form of Hebrew which was the vernacular spoken during the time of Jesus.
35 Renan, 14.
36 Woolford, Robert Browning, 5.
37 Woolford, Robert Browning, XV.
38 Knight, XIII.
39 Woolford, Robert Browning, 69.