Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Quest for Eros: Browning and 'Fifine'

Quest for Eros: Browning and 'Fifine'

Southwell, Samuel B.

Paperback

Literary FiguresLiterary CriticismPoetry Criticism

ISBN10: 0813154715
ISBN13: 9780813154718
Publisher: Univ Pr Of Kentucky
Published: Jul 15 2014
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.65 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Students of Browning have long been puzzled by the discrepancies between the dramatic framework of Fifine and its symbolic development, but these difficulties are resolved in Southwell's explication by a biographical hypothesis. The powerful influence of the memory of his beloved wife, Elizabeth, involved Browning in a deep ambivalence, and Fifine at the Fair represents his effort to escape the effects of the profound inhibitions associated with her memory, while at the same time remaining loyal to it.

The poem is itself a flawed quest for Eros. Browning's symbolic vision of sexuality as the central vitalizing force in human culture--a supreme achievement of the poem--is followed by a renunciation of the quest, but the validity of the vision is explicitly affirmed and its promise recognized.

In Fifine at the Fair Browning's artistic powers are splendidly in evidence. Southwell's fresh examination of the tensions within the poem offers new understanding of its power.

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