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Article: Winking through the chinks: Eros and Ellipsis in Robert Browning's "Love Among the Ruins".
- Article from:
- Victorian Poetry
- Article date:
- December 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 West Virginia University Press, University of West Virginia. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1798, and with a spooniness of which not many Victorians would ever consider him capable, Thomas Malthus celebrated love at its most pure as that culminating glory which "scarcely a man who has once experienced [it]" does not regard "as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves to bask." (1) Over the course of the nineteenth century, the quantity and popularity of lyric verse that seemed to hold out the hope of just such a basking in the sunshine of pure love increased as if in geometrical progression. Another type of poem, however, might cast a doubtful or disfiguring shadow over Malthus' sunny spot. Which type of poem we are reading may not be ...