Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Founded in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais.

In 1850 they also started publishing a journal with their poems and ideas: The Germ.

The brotherhood as such was short-lived but its influence and inspiration can be felt until the end of the century.

Narrative painting

Edward Burne-Jones, The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874

The dignity of work, art, craftsmanship

Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852-65

Landscape and outdoor painting

Richard Redgrave, The Emigrant’s Last Sight of Home, 1858

For us one of the most interesting aspects of the Pre-Raphaelite movement is the connection between art and literature:some of the artists were both painters and poets (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) and others were models and poets (Christina Rossetti) at the same time. Moreover:

- Artists illustrated edition of contemporary poetry: for example the Moxon edition of Tennyson’s poems (1857)

- Paintings without title where accompanied by verse

- There are poems and paintings about the same topics:The Blessed Damozel, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

John Everett Millais, 1851

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851 without title but with some lines from Tennyson’s poem Mariana:

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,He cometh not’, she said;She said ‘I am aweary. Aweary – I would that I were dead’

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s illustration of his own poem:The Blessed Damozel, the story of a lover who looks down on her lover by heaven.

The poem was published in The Germ, 1850.

Henry Holiday, Dante and Beatrice, 1883

Dante Gabriel RossettiBeata Beatrix1864-70

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, 1855

Before reading Ulysses

Tennyson took the subject of one of his best-known poems from Dante, from the Italian poet’s portrait of Ulysses in his Inferno.

Ulysses appeared in the Tennyson’s 1842 collection of poems and it is a dramatic monologue:

What do you know about this poetic form? What does it allow the poet to do? Talking about narrative techniques: how is a story told in a dramatic monologue different from one told in a ballad?

After reading Ulysses

How would you define the tone of the poem?

How would you define Ulysses?

How would you define Telemachus?

Why does Ulysses want to travel more? Where does he want to go?

Can you infer something about Tennyson’s faith from this poem?

Think about the Lady of Shalott:

Leaving aside the stylistic differences, would you say the two poems have a similar tone/theme?

The Lady of Shalott has always been read as a celebration of artistic isolation. Tennyson revisits the Romantic rejection of vis-à-vis confrontation with external reality, better expressed in John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale:

‘ […] for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful death’ (1819)

However, the position of the poet could also be read in the terms proposed by Armstrong, as the Lady does leave her art and go out into ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ (Tennyson, In Memoriam).

We could think about the words of Ash in Possession:‘Could the Lady of Shalott have written Melusina in her barred and moated tower?’ (p. 188)

Tennyson has been praised for:

-the musicality of his verse (he was called ‘the lord of language’ and ‘the finest ear of any English poets)

--being the poet of the people

He has also been heavily criticised and rejected, especially by modernist poets, for:

--being a discoverer of words rather than ideas

--being the stupidest of the English poets

--being elusive, sentimental, digressive

--being monotonous: Auden said: ‘there was little about melancholia that he did not know; there was little else he did’.

Robert Browning(1812 – 1889)

Before 1860 ‘a clumsy barbarian’‘Mrs Browning’s husband’

After 1860Recognized as a great poet, a rival for Tennyson

First meeting 1845

Huge correspondence: 500 letters

Elopement and secret marriage 1846

Life in Italy

Elizabeth’s death 1861

Browning is mostly remembered for his dramatic monologues. The main collections are:

Dramatic Lyrics (1842)

Men and Women (1855)

Dramatis Personae (1864)

And the longer poem:

The Ring and the Book (1868)

When Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey, Henry James reflected that many oddities and many great writers had been buried there ‘but none of the odd ones have been so great and none of the great ones been so odd’.

His fame and reputation follow two directions.

A stylistic experimenter and innovator admired by modernist poets

A teacher and a philosopher for many groups of people who founded Browning Societies in Britain and America

Andrea del Sarto(1486 -1531)

Main source for his life:

Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, 1550.

Browning wrote the poem in Italy.It is one of many about people belonging to the Italian Renaissance.

The Madonna of the Harpies, 1517Oil on woodGalleria degli Uffizi

‘a common greyness silvers everything’

‘all is silver-grey Placid and perfect in my art’

This monologue is considered one of the most accomplished Browning produced.

First of all it is a story, with a plot and characters.

Secondly, it investigates the psychology of the character.

Thirdly, it provides a vision of art (maybe the poet’s?)

This is a narrative poem: it tells a story.

Who are the characters?

What about the time and setting of the story?

What about the plot? Can you piece together the protagonist’s story from the fragments he gives?

What can you say about the fictional time? Is anachrony used?

The poem provides deep psychological insights by evoking the tension within the character, the oppositions tearing his soul. The main contrasts the poem highlights are:

Idealism vs sordid realityDeterminism vs free willSelf-justification vs self-deprecation

Can you find expressions describing these feelings?

Can you find some passages when Andrea contradicts himself?

Can you find examples of irony?

What is the difference between Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea himself?

What did they think of him?

Has he obtained fame and glory on earth?

What are the reasons of his failure?

Does he hope to get a compensation in heaven?

Can you identify one sentence that summarises Browning’s ideas about perfection/ambition (a kind of declaration of his poetics)?

Summing up...

How is the story told in a dramatic monologue?

How are the characters portrayed?

As a reader, do you think you know more or less than the characters in the story?

What are the marks of orality?

We have said the dramatic monologue comes from Elizabethan and Jacobean monologues and soliloquies. What other literary form does it remind you of?