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Porphyria's Lover
Although there are many themes in each work of literature, if I had to boil this down to one, I would say that Robert Browning stresses the theme of violent love (especially in relation to madness)...
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Porphyria's Lover
The speaker's telling of these events is unusual because he (or she) casually describes winding Porphyria's long, blonde hair around Porphyria's throat "three times" and strangling her. The speaker...
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Porphyria's Lover
Browning's poem takes place in a cottage during a storm at night. Porphyria, a beautiful woman with long blond hair, enters the cottage and builds a fire, a symbol of the hot passion she ignites in...
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Porphyria's Lover
"Porphyria's Lover" is written in dramatic monologue, a format Robert Browning popularized and in which he excelled. Unlike some of Browning's monologues that don't have an actual plot but are...
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Porphyria's Lover
Browning has written several dramatic monologues in which the persona is mentally disturbed (My Last Duchess, etc.) This is another one in which the speaker is obviously not of sound mind. During...
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Porphyria's Lover
I would characterize the speaker of this poem as an unstable person, someone who is out of touch with reality, and a murderer. The speaker is gratified and surprised to learn that Porphyria...
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Porphyria's Lover
In "Porphyria's Lover," Browning is addressing the obsession the outwardly polite and prudish Victorian society had with sensational stories of horror and depravity. The themes of sex and violence...
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Porphyria's Lover
You are right to focus on this intriguing detail as something that helps us to build up a picture of the narrator in this excellent dramatic monologue. Let us first remind ourselves of how the text...
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Porphyria's Lover
Porphyria's Lover transgresses and contravenes immensely from the "prudish" Victorian era in that it broke with every canon of spirituality, aesthetics, and social norm accepted at the time. The...
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Porphyria's Lover
It is in lines 31 to 36 that the speaker suddenly uses a series of first-person pronouns, such as "mine, mine". This is when he realizes that Porphyria belongs to him completely. He has doubted...
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Porphyria's Lover
Both of these poems are dramatic monologues which makes for a good comparison/contrast. The way that they are similar is that both speakers are aware that their love affair is about to end. The...
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Porphyria's Lover
What these lines mean is that Porphyria is not able to follow her heart. Instead, she has been following what society says she must do. So she has been unable to set her heart's passion free...
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Porphyria's Lover
"Porphyria's Lover" was quite subversive for its time (and to an extent, still is) but prose writers of Browning's Victorian England were also dabbling in Gothic literature and horror. This is one...
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Porphyria's Lover
Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" is as much about power as it is love. He takes a narrative about an illicit affair and does two things with it: makes it beautiful and makes it about power. When...
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Porphyria's Lover
Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” written in 1836 embraces the shock value of a murdered lover. Browning’s poem uses a dramatic monologue to tell the story of Porphyria and her lover....
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Porphyria's Lover
“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue. The poem’s story comes from the mind of the man who waits for Porphyria. The poem belongs to the lover and his perspective. The...
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Porphyria's Lover
The narrator's presentation of Porphyria's feelings and actions is unusual because he retains the same tone even after he's described the way he's murdered her. It happens so quickly, and he...
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Porphyria's Lover
Porphyria's Lover is typical of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues in that the poems reveal as much about the dramatic narrators as about the putative subjects of the poem. Several other poems...
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Porphyria's Lover
This is an excellent and intriguing question! Well done for asking it! It is important to realise that Browning in this poem creates an unreliable narrator whose words we clearly come to doubt as...
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Porphyria's Lover
After the narrator killed his lover, he "propped her head up as before,/Only, this time my shoulder bore", and then sits like that, in semblance of a happy couple, happy that she is his...
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Porphyria's Lover
Good question. The first thing to say is that the two poems are both dramatic monologues, a style which is specifically associated with the Victorian era of English Literature - and more...
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Porphyria's Lover
In the Browning poem "Porphyria's Lover," the characterization of the narrator is direct, as the reader hears his voice. Browning establishes the characterization of the narrator slowly. At first,...
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Porphyria's Lover
I think you have become slightly confused between the two main characters of this excellent poem. Your question implies that there are three characters, but do not forget that the speaker and the...
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Porphyria's Lover
Since its first publication in 1836, the popularity of the poem “Porphyria’s Lover” among readers and critics hasn’t waned. It’s written in the form of a dramatic monologue, whose speaker describes...
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Porphyria's Lover
“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning defies the time in which it was written. The Victorian Age was a very prudish time period; consequently, Browning’s topics were not always concerned proper...
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Porphyria's Lover
In the first five lines it describes the rainy weather outside. The wind picks up as well, and this sets the tone for the poem. The next 10 lines describe her coming inside and warming by the...
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Porphyria's Lover
You have asked a very broad question concerning the entire length of this rather complex poem. I am going to focus on one section of this poem that gives such a rich and disturbing psychological...
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Porphyria's Lover
I'll answer concerning the Browning poems you are interested in, and let another editor compare them to Keats' imagery. In "Porphyria's Lover," Browning is addressing the obsession the outwardly...
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Porphyria's Lover
Robert Browning's poem "Porphyria's Lover" is written in a genre known as the dramatic monologue, in which the narrator of the poem seems to be speaking to himself or an unknown reader or audience,...
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Porphyria's Lover
This is one of many excellent narrative poems that Robert Browning produced featuring an unreliable narrator who, perhaps much like the unreliable narrators of Poe's work, is clearly on the edge of...
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Porphyria's Lover
This poem has an element of the confessional about it, as the narrator, the lover of Porphyria that features in the title, recounts to us what happened that evening with Porphyria and looks back on...
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Porphyria's Lover
Numerous answers to your question could be given. Far too many for a short-answer format such as this, in fact. I'll give one answer. Browning's use of a first-person speaker in both poems allows...
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Porphyria's Lover
I think the only feeling the narrator really registers is that they feel "Happy and proud" to know that Porphyria loves them (I use the gender-nonspecific "them" since we do not know for certain...
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Porphyria's Lover
Robert Browning’s poem, “Porphyria’s Lover,” is considered a classic example of the dramatic monologue. It has a well defined speaker who cannot be identified with the poet. It is a pure monologue,...
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Porphyria's Lover
In this poem, set in the mid 1800's (probably around 1834 in England, where it was written), a man is waiting in his cottage for his loved one to come to him. She is a wealthy woman who had been...
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Porphyria's Lover
Browning appeals to the reader's senses in these two poems the same way poets usually appeal to a reader's senses--through imagery. That's the definition of imagery. In "Porphyria's Lover," for...
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Porphyria's Lover
'Power and possession' are certainly crucial to the speaker, the Lover, but in the context of this dramatic monologue probably have less to do with the desires of men in general (and thus with...
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Porphyria's Lover
There were several risks involved in Porphyria's actions.1. Her reputation. During this time period, having affairs with men was a stain on a young lady's reputation. If she was unmarried,...
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Porphyria's Lover
"Porphyria's Lover" is a narrative poem by Robert Browning. It first appeared in print in 1836. On a stormy night, the narrator's lover, named Porphyria, "glides in" to his house and makes "all...
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Porphyria's Lover
There are two accepted pronounciations. The preferred pronounciation of Por·phyr·i·a is "pawr-feer-ee-uh". It can also be pronounced "pawr-fahy-ree-uh"
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Porphyria's Lover
Well, if you're focusing on ballads, that's a specific form and tradition of writing, so one of the easiest approaches is to look at how the poem is an example of a ballad and what that means. For...
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Porphyria's Lover
Browning's 'Porphyria's Lover' is a dramatic monologue which means it is written in the first person allowing us to see into the mind of the speaker. Clearly as the speaker is a murderer this is...
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Porphyria's Lover
Both of these poems are dramatic monologues which means that the poet has created a character which then talks to us directly through the use of first person. This is interesting for the reader as...
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Porphyria's Lover
I would strongly suggest selecting another dramatic monologue by Robert Browning. He certainly is the master of dramatic monologues, and it is clear that the various aspects of "Porphyria's Lover"...
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Porphyria's Lover
To write about Porphyria's Lover for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course, first you need to choose some salient aspect of the poem, then decide on a critical approach, then do...
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Porphyria's Lover
This is a very interesting issue to consider in relation to this great poem and I think the subject of gender is very important in discussing the full complexities of this poem. However, at the...
