Count Gismond
"Count Gismond" is a poem by Robert Browning, frequently anthologised as an example of the dramatic monologue. It first appeared in 1842 in Browning's Dramatic Lyrics, where it was known simply as "France".[1]
The poem is written in 21 verses.
"Count Gismond: Aix in Provence" may, on one reading, be seen as a story of the vindication of innocence. A woman relates to a friend an episode of her own life, when a defender arose for her when she was caught in the toils woven by the unsuspected envy and hypocrisy of her cousins and Count Gauthier, who attempt to bring dishonor upon her on her birthday, with an accusation that she and Gauthier had been lovers. Her faith that the trial by combat between Gauthier and Gismond must end in Gismond's victory and her vindication reflects, in this reading, the medieval atmosphere of an idealised chivalrous France.
However an alternative reading of the poem, suggested by various hints in the verse (e.g. the absence of the narrator's denial of her relationship with Gauthier, the evasive way she breaks off her story when Gismond arrives), hints that the woman may be an 'unreliable narrator', as in the poem 'My Last Duchess'.
On a third interpretation, the ambiguity between these two readings is the poem's major attribute.[2]
Sources
- ^ Kennedy, Richard S.; Hair, Donald S. (2007). The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browning: A Literary Life. University of Missouri Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780826265524. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Count Gismond.
- ^ Alison Case: 'Browning's "Count Gismond": A Canvas for Projection', Victorian Poetry Vol 34/2 1996 JSTOR 40002913
External links
- Count Gismond - the text of the poem
- Analysis
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- Strafford (1837)
- Pippa Passes (1841)
- King Victor and King Charles (1842)
- The Return of the Druses (1843)
- A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843)
- Colombe's Birthday (1844)
- Luria (1846)
- A Soul's Tragedy (1846)
- In a Balcony (1855)
and poems
- Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)
- Paracelsus (1835)
- "Porphyria's Lover" (1836)
- "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" (1836)
- Sordello (1840)
- Dramatic Lyrics (1842, "My Last Duchess", "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister", "Count Gismond")
- Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845, "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix", "Meeting at Night", "The Laboratory", "The Lost Leader")
- Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850)
- Men and Women (1855, "Love Among the Ruins", "Evelyn Hope", "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", "Andrea del Sarto", "Fra Lippo Lippi", "A Toccata of Galuppi's")
- Dramatis Personæ (1864, "Rabbi ben Ezra", "Caliban upon Setebos")
- The Ring and the Book (1868–9)
- Balaustion's Adventure (1871)
- Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871)
- Fifine at the Fair (1872)
- Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873)
- Aristophanes' Apology (1875)
- The Inn Album (1875)
- Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper (1876)
- The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877)
- La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic (1878)
- Dramatic Idyls (1879, 1880)
- Jocoseria (1883)
- Ferishtah's Fancies (1884)
- Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887)
- Asolando (1889)
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (wife)
- Robert Barrett Browning (son)
- Casa Guidi
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