ESPECIALLY INTERESTING RESPONSES FROM WEEK SIX, POSTED WEEK SEVEN

Caroline Broler
Addressing political issues in Browning’s “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
            In “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” the subtle humor eases the apprehension of discussing a politically sensitive topic such as the Catholic Church. While Browning doesn’t overtly mention the institution, he sets his monologue in a Spanish cloister and develops two opposite characters: the nameless narrator, and a fellow monk of whom he is not fond, Brother Lawrence. He makes the Church a more approachable backdrop in a rather relatable situation.
            The first way the Church is made more approachable is through the genre. Because it is a soliloquy, the audience enters the private thoughts of a member of the cloister, therefore themselves entering it. And beyond the setting, it seems to play no greater political role. Neither character can be said to represent the Church because they are such polar opposites; the narrator is angry and reclusive, while Brother Lawrence is patient, kind and generous; all traits which are universal. Likewise, although there are references to scripture which are played upon, such as “Plena gratia Ave, Virgo!”, they aren’t intended to be offensive (71-71). In fact, the mistakes are a device of humor to lighten religious sentiment within the work. By removing the “heaviness” associated with literature of religious subjects, what Browning accomplishes is an observation of human nature. He takes what seem to be glorified religious figures and shows a human side to them: a side that is spiteful, and potentially jealous instead of forever gracious; a side that is maybe a little more simple minded than all-knowing. The reader then can relate to them as humans, removing the nested orientalism against the Church as an institution.

Professor's Reply: In the passage marked with bold above, Caroline, you notice Browning's dramatization of two Catholic Monks that you suggest are so differently individualized that they cannot possibly both exemplify Catholicism. Your subsequent smart observations about each character suggest where the points of critique might actually lie. The speaker's obsessive concerns with matters of bodily desire (the hair-washing girls; the scrofulous French novel) suggest that Catholic celebacy required in cloistered life might as easily produce spite and jealousy as purity of spirit, while simple-mindedness is as likely a consequence of cloistered life as cultivated wisdom. Perhaps then, the monologue invites evaluation of cloistered life as a religious practice? By "nested orientalism" do you perhaps mean something like "surreptitious prejudice"?

Chelsea Nacker

As the leading poet of the Victorian age, Tennyson and the relationship between his life and his poetry particularly interested me this week. In lecture it was mentioned that Tennyson was a great admirer of Keats and I was interested in the effect of Keats’s theory of negative capability on Tennyson. Insights into this can be found both in his personal experience with his friend’s [Arthur Henry Hallam's] death as well as his professional experience of being the transitional poet between the Romantic Period and the Victorian age. 
In the sixth part of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” he goes into extensive detail about the pain of hearing about his best friend’s death weeks after the event. The knowledge of the tragic irony held by the reader as they anticipate the delayed transition between blissful ignorance and agonizing knowledge resonated with Keats’s idea of negative capability as a threshold state. While in this shocking transition it is doubtful that Tennyson dealt with the “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”(943 Keats), it gave his real life exposure to the concept so that he could carry those ideas with him throughout his life.
The strength produced by the above experience can be recognized as Tennyson finds himself at another threshold state, and this time with poetry. As the world became more complex, artist like Tennyson needed to address social issues of morality and the changing political scene rather than emotions and human consciousness. In this respect, the knowledge from his life comes into play as Tennyson successfully leads the poetic movement through a difficult transition in a way that Keats would surely have approved.

Professor's Reply: Your application of an aesthetic concept (negative capability) to a personal experience is intriguing here, Chelsea, especially if you press on with this thought. For instance, consider the way in which Tennyson pursues his "uncertainties, mysteries, doubts etc." into grief-filled meditations on Hallam's afterlife: if Arthur's soul lives on, is it in any sense that still has accessibility and value for the grieving Alfred? The uncertainty here seems to swell into an extraordinarily rich imaginative space, doesn't it?

Jenna Reinhardt
Response to “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
The speaker of the poem attempts to demonstrate his own superior spirituality by comparing his thoughts and action with those of Brother Lawrence. He cites many of Brother Lawrence’s wrong doings including gluttony and lechery. The speaker accuses Brother Lawrence of these distasteful acts, when it is obvious, based on the speaker’s examples, that he is the one actually suffering from these sins. However, throughout the poem, the speaker is constantly juxtaposing his supposed righteousness with Brother Lawrence’s claimed wickedness. The nameless monk’s interior commentary reveals corruption and wickedness under a thin disguise of righteousness. The speaker represents the public figure who, while looked upon to be a moral leader in the community, is hiding a dark, corrupt character. This context allows Browning to expose the hypocrisy of the Church without being held liable for his thoughts because there is a distance between the unnamed monk and the author. It is important that the speaker remain nameless. The speaker could be any religious man and that this hypocrisy is active in all areas of the church.

The monk has no intended audience. He is speaking to himself. This inner monologue creates a feeling of secrecy for the reader. These are the untainted thoughts of this monk. Had the monk been speaking to an audience, his thoughts would need to be censored. Because we are only aware of the speaker’s thoughts, the reader sees the world through the lens of the scheming monk, attempting to expel his sin onto another. The reader sees his distorted version of religious and moral principles and his attempt to increase his own righteousness through the damnation of another. For example, the monk threatens to damn Brother Lawrence by tricking him into glancing at an inappropriate book, “my scrofulous French novel on gray paper with blunt type!/Simply glance at it, you grovel hand and foot in Belial’s gripe” (57-60). While the speaker is attempting to force Brother Lawrence into wicked acts, he admits that the evil book is his own. He is unaware of the hypocrisy of his actions, his willingness to damn his soul by making a deal with the devil to prove his righteousness in comparison to another. His righteousness cannot seem to exist without his supposedly evil counterpart. The more evil he makes Brother Lawrence out to be, the more righteous he believes himself.

Professor's Reply: I think you're dead right that Browning's critique (and humor) is directed against the flaws of hypocrisy, and the self-righteousness of doctrinal scrupulosity; but do you think that the celibate life of the cloister peculiar to Roman Catholicism inflects the critique in any special way? In other words, if we imagine a more worldly, married man-of-the-cloth who kept a copy of the ribald Rabelais in his top desk-drawer to read on the sly, would we find him quite as morally charged a figure as this angry monk? [See Anthony Trollope's The Warden for my example here!]

Rachel Page
         The persona of the speaker in “My Last Duchess” allows Robert Browning to comment on both class and gender politics in the Victorian Age.  Other progressive writers from this time period, such as Charlotte Bronte, focus on the objectification of women as property in the sphere of marriage.  Browning’s speaker exemplifies the dominance that white males of high class exhibit over women, especially those of lower class backgrounds. 
            Browning first illustrates the objectification of women in the first line of the poem “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall” (line 1).  In setting up the woman as a picture on the wall, as opposed to a living person, he immediately allows the speaker to make opinionated claims about the former duchess.  One of these claims exists in his claiming she had a heart “too soon made glad” (22).  The duke represents the woman as one-dimensional in her emotions and criticizes their simplicity, which parallels the lack of agency women had at this time in communicating their feelings and ideas for fear of chastisement by their husbands. 
            The duke’s implication that he has done away with his wife in order to replace her with a new duchess (and plentiful dowry), finalizes Browning’s point about women as objects in the institution of marriage.  Men chose to discard women as pawns if they did not properly fill the somewhat unrealistic expectations which men held about them.

Professor's Reply: Rachel's response raises many interesting questions worth further conversation. Here are a couple that occur to me as I read: if this comments on "both class and gender politics in the Victorian Age," what do we make of its setting in Ferrara in Italy, and implicitly, but not explicitly, in the Early Modern period? Second, if this woman has been rendered inanimate, an art object, is there a way in which Browning has perhaps metabolized her through words, so that as we read the poem, we give life to her? And is that life quite as "one-dimensional" as the duke would have it be?

Jonathan Cheng

"Soliloquy of the Victorian Cloister": Browning and the Contrast from Romanticism
Browning pays homage to his Romantic predecessors by acknowledging the importance in analyzing the psychological process of individuals; however, a stark contrast that he portrays is an acceptance of very theatrical scenarios to make a point. Wordsworth made his point very clear in that literature could only escape the aristocracy’s control if the literary language was made more universal. Furthermore, he may have seen works by Browning as far too theatrical to be a realistic portrayal of real life scenarios that would be appealing to a working to middle-class audience. However, in a way that is very reminiscent to Edgar Allan Poe’s, A Tell Tale Heart, Browning’s, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, exhibits a depiction of the “cross-wise” (1254) speaker as being on the teetering edge of paranoia through the meter of the piece. With Poe, the mentally ill speaker could be seen as such through a great use of punctuation that insinuates an inconsistency of thought. With Browning’s Soliloquy, the speaker has a meter dictated by a continual use of rhetorical questions and exclamations; because of this, the reader is able to see that the speaker is alone in his thought (further underlined by Browning’s use of soliloquy in the title) and actually does not know the truth about those who exist in the physical world with him. By having his speaker be this overly dramatic, and seemingly unrealistic individual, Browning is able to craft a more poignant message in order to characterize the Church as he sees fit.

Professor's Reply: I love your point that the rhythm of the poem (I'm not sure it's the meter) is largely determined by those constant questions ("What? your myrtle bush wants trimming?" "How go on your flowers? None double?" etc.). They give the illusion of a dialogue that only serves to emphasize the lack of communication between the raging, hermetic speaker and the pottering Brother Lawrence, blithely unaware. I'm not sure, though, that the theatricality of these dramatic monologues is incompatible with the Romantic poet's dislike of "theatre" or poses. The poet and his own feelings may be off-stage, but doesn't the lyric speaker still reveal himself, indeed, warts and all?!.