The Theory of Elective Affinities in the Dramatic Love Poems of Robert Browning

Author

• Harry C. Tartt, Xavier University of Louisiana

Date of Award

1969

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Keywords

Robert Browning, Elective Affinities, Goethe, Victorian Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Romantic Love, Literary Criticism, Comparative Literature, The Ring and the Book, Pompilia, Predestination, Soul Theory

Abstract

This thesis, submitted to Xavier University in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master of Arts degree in 1969, examines Robert Browning's treatment of romantic love in his dramatic poems through the theoretical lens of elective affinities, which is a concept borrowed from chemistry and first applied to human relationships by Johann Wolfgang Goethe in his 1809 novel Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities). The study traces the origins of the chemical theory of elective affinities from seventeenth-century analytical chemists including Hermann Boerhaave and Torbern Bergmann through Goethe's literary application of the concept to four lovers whose passions operate as blind, irresistible forces analogous to chemical attraction and repulsion. The thesis then applies this framework comparatively to sixty-four of Browning's love poems, organizing them into four categories: poems of erotic attainment, poems of spiritual attainment, poems of frustration and failure, and poems demonstrating the negative aspect of elective affinities. Close readings of individual poems including "By the Fireside," "One Word More," "Porphyria's Lover," "The Statue and the Bust," "Pompilia," and "Giuseppe Caponsacchi" from The Ring and the Book are used to demonstrate Browning's sustained engagement with the concept that lovers are drawn together by forces beyond their conscious control, often to the exclusion of a third person. The study concludes that Browning extends Goethe's concept by emphasizing the spiritual and predestined dimensions of love, ultimately arguing that true union of souls is fulfilled not in earthly life but in eternity.

Note: No original abstract was included; this abstract is provided by the XULA Digital Commons editors.

Recommended Citation

Tartt, Harry C., "The Theory of Elective Affinities in the Dramatic Love Poems of Robert Browning" (1969). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 145.
https://digitalcommons.xula.edu/etd/145