Religious Views
nov. 4th, 2010 by jobasfer
Here I selected some information of the Victorian website because with this I can explain the religious influences in Robert Browning and I as this web said it is difficult to establish Robert Browning in a concrete religion or belief. Robert first was atheist and then he changes his thoughts and he surrenders himself to God, to the Christianity. Through his poems we can see his beliefs and thoughts.
HIS RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbrelge.html
The history of Robert Browning’s shifting religious views typifies the difficulties which most thinking Victorians encountered during this period of serious challenge to established Christianity. His mother, a religious woman, both Nonconformist and Evangelical, was still open-minded enough to purchase, at her 14-year-old son’s request, “Mr. Shelley’s atheistically poem Queen Mab.” Robert must have confirmed her worst fears when he promptly became, like Shelley, a vegetarian and an atheist.
INSIDE HIS POETRY
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbrelge.html
Although it is pretty clear from his poetry that he did not remain an atheist, whether he ever completely shed his sceptical views is still an open question. Many of his poems approach the problem of faith and the nature of man’s religious aspirations, but whenever we think that he has offered us a resolution, a second reading will show that resolution undercut or made suspect.
IS HE A CHRISTIAN?
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbrelge.html
And on one occasion much later in life when he was asked if he considered himself a Christian, Browning is supposed to have answered with “a thunderous ‘NO!'” Nevertheless, many nineteenth-century readers thought that they knew where the real Robert Browning stood, and it is easy to find articles with titles like “Browning as a Teacher of Religion.” Certainly a love which is very much like Christian love is always approved in his poetry. And Browning knew the Bible so well that he called his first few collections of poems Bells and Pomegranates–a reference (to the decorations on the robes of the Hebrew priests) so obscure that even Elizabeth Barrett, a knowledgeable Bible-reader, had to ask what it meant.
HIS SYSTEM OF BELIEF
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbrelge.html
It is difficult, however, to discover a system of belief which he consistently approves. Usually we find believers who have taken their beliefs to extremes shown in an unfavorable light. This pattern of discrediting the extremists may partially explain Browning’s fondness for the dramatic monologue: by allowing his speaker to express views with which neither the poet nor the reader would be in sympathy (as for example in “Johannes Agricola”), he is able to undercut positions which he opposes without exposing his own beliefs. One may suspect that this rhetorical technique permits him to leave his own beliefs permanently undecided. Even when his speaker, like David in “Saul” takes a thoroughly pro-Christian stance, it is still a hypothetical position: whether or not the poet is a believer, real belief must work this way.
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