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The Landscape of Browning's Childe Roland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William C. De Vane Jr.
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Extract

In his admirable paper upon the sources of Browning's Childe Roland, Mr. Harold Golder shows from what a rich storehouse of nursery tale, poetry, and romance the poet drew for many of the incidents that go to make up that poem. Childe Roland is such a synthetic poem that the problem of finding satisfactory sources for it is not simple. Nor is it made easier by Browning's stubborn insistence that the only true source of the poem is the line from King Lear. But it has been impossible to be content with Browning's statement, and critic after critic has ransacked ballad, fairy tale and legend to find the origin of the simples which the poet has compounded in his poem. In the light of Browning's statement, the problem becomes one of “establishing a subconscious connection between Edgar's maudlin words and the material from which Browning obviously drew”; in other words, we must find for the sources of Childe Roland materials so familiar to Browning at the impressionable time of his life as to have become a part of his own mental character, and further, the materials must be such as would definitely suggest the images which appear in the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1925 , pp. 426 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 P.M.L.A., XXXIX, 963-78.

2 In a letter to Miss Irene Hardy, Poet Lore, XXIV, 56. Golder also makes use of this fact (cf. p. 963).

3 III, iv. 185: “Child Rowland to the dark tower came.”

4 Golder, op. cit., p. 964.

5 Cf. Griffin and Minchin, Life of Browning, 1910, p. 189.

6 One needs only to remember the “square yellow book” that plays such a great part in the composition of The Ring and the Booh, the books that are the bases of the Parleyings, and the prose accounts of Paracelsus, etc. It was Browning's characteristic manner of composition. Cf. Griffin and Minchin pp. 71ff.

7 Cf. Griffin and Minchin, pp. 71ff.; Orr, Life and Letters of Browning. Revised ed. 1908, pp. 144, 201, 232, 378f.; Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., Vol. I, pp. 40, 532, Vol. II, pp. 388, 555; Letters of E. B. Browning, ed. Kenyon, 1897, Vol. I, pp. 420, 442. Golder also calls attention to this fact, as above, p. 976.

8 Cf. Griffin and Minchin, p. 31.

9 Ibid. Chapter I contains an excellent account of Browning's early reading. Griffin had access to the poet's library.

10 Browning used the second English edition, translated from the Dutch by J. F. Fritsch, London, 1778. Cf. Browning's note to line 80 of the parleying With Gerard de Lairesse. The present paper springs from a general study of all the Parleyings which I am undertaking.

11 Cf. Griffin and Minchin, pp. 9-10.

12 Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, London, 1887.

13 The “walk” is described in Chaps. 16 and 17 of Book VI (Of Landscape) of The Art of Painting, 1778.

14 Parleyings…With Gerard de Lairesse, 11. 44-50.

15 One wonders, in connection with Browning's use of Lear, if the idea of “the bright white shaft” of lightning feeling for the adulterous Ottima and Sebald in Pippa Passes may not have been suggested by Lear's speech (Act. III, SC. II, 11. 49-59), “Let the great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads Find out their enemies now” …“thou similar of virtue That art incestuous,…”

16 In The Art of Painting, 1778, p. 252.

17 Cf. Childe Roland, 11. 51-52; the safe road vanishes.

18 Cf. ibid., ll. 165-66, 176-78. Browning has mountains crowding all around, “mere ugly heights and heaps,” “two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn and horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain….”

19 Cf. Ibid., ll. 45-48, “the day had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close.”

20 Cf. Ibid., l. 76, “One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare.”

21 Compare with Browning's “hateful cripple,” Ibid., l. 45.

22 This may have suggested Browning's speared water-rat, Ibid., l. 125.

23 All of the details and quotations come from Chap. 17 of The Art of Painting, comprising only four pages of the 1778 edition, 258-61. All of the above details come from page 259.

24 Cf. Childe Roland, ll. 109-20. “the sudden little river.”

25 Compare Ibid., ll. 130-31, 145-50, 151-53. In Lairesse, here, are all the materials of Browning's landscape, lacking only the synthetic touch and poetic imagination of Browning.

26 Roland's experience is singularly like Lairesse's. They both come into weird countries, all escape is seemingly cut off, they both pass barriers and hope for a better land, and both are bitterly disappointed. Cf. Childe Roland, 11. 109-38.

27 Compare Childe Roland, ll. 154, “some palsied oak, a cleft in him.” These and the following quotations are upon p. 260-61 of The Art of Painting, 1778.

28 Compare Childe Roland, 45-48, and also 11. 188-89, “before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft.”

29 Cf. Handbook to Browning's Works, 1923, p. 274. Browning read and corrected Mrs. Orr's book.

30 Browning uses many of the details that originally come from Lairesse whenever he wishes to create an atmosphere of horror. A few examples will suffice: cf. Easter Day, Sections XVIII and XIX; the Ring and the Book, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, ll. 1879-89; Sordello, Book IV, ll. 120-40; Paracelsus, III, 1030-41. It is interesting to note, too, that Love Among the Ruins, and even one or two lines from Women and Roses, both written within a day or two of Childe Roland, are reminiscent of Lairesse in a happier mood.

31 Cf. The Art of Painting, 1778, p. 261.