‘Bang-whang-whang goes the drum’ : Robert Browning ou l’énergie comique de l’homme-orchestre

Abstract

Robert Browning’s vis comica has long been overlooked, some readers from the Browning Society, founded in 1887, preferring to see a philosopher in the poet, and some critics, like George Santayana, choosing to dismiss Browning’s ‘poetry of barbarism’. However, rereading today Browning’s poems through the prism of Freud’s theory of pleasure as a release of tension allows one to show Browning’s comical energy as it irrepressibly surfaces in his dramatic monologues. This article aims to study two speakers from Men and Women (1855), in “Up at a Villa — Down in the City” and “Fra Lippo Lippi”. The dramatic monologues draw upon a densely-interwoven network of puns, ejaculations, embedded fragments of songs, written or spoken speeches, as well as a number of languages, typographical devices and rhythmic counterpoints. The result is a variety of vocal effects such as innuendoes and lapsus. Browning’s comic world, standing out against the carnivalesque background of a reinvented Italy, displays an energy that makes the very page seem to vibrate.

Keywords

• Browning (Robert)
• dramatic monologue
• comedy
• energy
• Freud (Sigmund)
• Italy