Stranded at the Border: Browning, France, and the Challenge of Cosmopolitanism in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country

Infinite Movement: Robert Browning and the Dramatic Travelogue

“…However, Christopher M. Keirstead, one of the few critics to consider Browning's travel writing in detail, has discussed the relation between traveller and environment in terms of genre, suggesting that Browning's poetry evinces "an unresolvable tension between the self-oriented mode of lyric", which figures "travel as a kind of self-enrichment", and the dramatic "aim of constructing that self through its engagement with the outside world". 7 Browning's travelogues present dramatic narratives that chart the engagement of the self with the world, but they are voiced by speakers who long to escape narrative and to realize a lyric autonomy. This longing to bring narrative to an end draws attention to the generic strategies not just of the dramatic monologue but also of travel writing.…”