Browning and Conversation

Argues that Browning's poems both encourage and require the kind of engagement typically required of the Victorians in their conversations, and explores what Victorians thought conversation was and how it functioned in their society. Browning's world is essentially interactive, a dramatized process drawing speaker and reader together. This volume argues that Browning's poems both encourage and require the kind of engagement typically required of the Victorians in their conversations, and explores what Victorians thought conversation was and how it functioned in their society. To value the conversational in Browning's poetry is to value the unscripted and inordinate. This book poses questions about the sources and narrative structures of the verse, even its layout on the page. By examining a series of specific poems in the context of Victorian conversation and society, Andrew St George offers the modern reader a new way of appreciating some of Browning's most significant work.