In rich and rewarding close readings, John Haydon Baker's Browning and Wordsworth explores Wordsworth's influence on Browning's career. Beginning with customary working definitions of realism, humanism, and idealism, Baker moves on to Anxiety of Influence and other Bloomian avatars. And, indeed, till the very end, he holds steadfast to the premise: "the relationship (of the two poets) is a test model of a strong poet's quest for self-definition against an overbearing predecessor" (22), accounting for five chapters of conflict, struggle, and murder of the father en route to the emergence of Browning the poet. On this journey, Baker painstakingly argues that Browning tries first to be "Wordsworth's radical successor" (29) before becoming disillusioned by his slide into conservative politics and the Church of England, enabling apposite Bloomian misreadings of Wordsworth in Paraclesus and Sordello, as Browning strives to erect himself, the latter poetic effusion memorably and evocatively captured in the locution of "the madman who had foisted the unreadable Sordello upon the world" (174).
With a solid grounding in Browning, Baker offers sensitive interpretations of Wordsworth's poetry, particularly The Excursion, which was popular among Browning's contemporaries, as well as reflections on Byron, Shelley, and Keats, as Browning might have encountered and responded to their poetic examples. Moreover, once Baker overcomes his own Bloomian anxiety, in the final four chapters he presents compelling accounts of Browning's readings and reacting to Wordsworth.
Browning and Wordsworth is provocative and valuable.
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