Talk:Porphyria's Lover

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For more than a century Robert Browning's classical poem Porphyria's Lover has been misinterpreted. It has been totally misread as representing wanton acts of depraved sexuality by a madman. Nothing could be further from the truth. Porphyria's Lover is about euthanasia, plain and simple. The response from the literary world is the same as it was with my take on After Apple Picking by Robert Frost, (which can be found at http://whendarknessfell.tripod.com/ ) they have again chosen to ignore my carefully written essay because, I submit, it annihilates conventional interpretations regarding the death of Porphyria's Lover to correctly state a case for euthanasia. Thus, I have again elected to publish it myself, go to http://porphyriaslover.tripod.com/ By necessity, the essay is lengthy ergo the reason I have chosen to provide a link to all my hard work instead of massively posting it here. In an attempt to change history and in reference to the perceived feasibility of my argument I am herewith soliciting learned opinion by inviting comments, pro or con. Cheers, J.T. Best—Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.152.48 (talk) 07:30, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry pal, but the literary world didn't ignore you because you're wrong, they ignored you because you're publishing from a tripod account.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.161.124.36 (talk) 03:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

My interpretation of the poem was that Porphyria isn't even a human at all. She is described, isn't she, as "gliding" towards him and causing him to heat up. Porphyria is a urinary infection, its most famous sufferer, of course, being King George III, and the reason for which he has always been referred to as "the mad monarch". It also occasionally causes uncharacteristic lechery and interferes with thought-process. If you read the poem that way, it is simply Robert Browning (or rather the narrator) suffering from an illness and "strangling", i.e., recovering, from it. Then of course Porphyria continues to sit, lifeless, next to him in the poem. The disease porphyria, truly enough, quite often doesn't leave one completely: it just lies dormant. Just my thoughts.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.81.33.39 (talk) 17:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

no ≤3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.34.65.234 (talk) 20:03, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Two analysis sections

We now have two separate analysis sections consisting entirely of original research. A "major scholarship" section would make a dandy replacement for both.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.126.155.69 (talk) 18:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

The "Porphyria's Lover" and Victorian Society section text seems to be a word for word copy from SparkNotes under the "commentary" section. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/browning/section1.html—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.243.180.12 (talk) 05:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I second that point. Any way to delete? It's not in encyclopedic format and is definite plagarism. If someone could delete or make original that section, that would be nice. I'm just a n00b, though, and don't know how to put up those banners. J1.grammar natz (talk) 01:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Last and first poem?

"Porphyria's Lover is the last poem by Robert Browning" is followed by ""Porphyria's Lover" is Browning's first short dramatic monologue, and also the first of his poems to examine abnormal psychology." - this isn't exactly clear! Did he carry on writing after or not, and if not, does it make sense to describe the poem as the first of something, rather than only? Theonecynic (talk) 18:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

History

The history of this poem dates back to the late 1800's where the romantic movement was a dominant source of poetry. 58.174.52.174 (talk) 08:40, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this is mistaken, both in periodicity and thematics. The Romantic Movement in England usually is dated from the 1790s to the 1830s. By the 1850s, the optimism and idealism characteristic of Romanticism is already in decline, heading for the disillusionment of Modernism. LewisLong (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Poem Indentation Suggestion

Whenever I've seen this poem written out before, it was indented in accordance with the ABABB structure, to emphasize this a bit more. Something like this:

The rain set early in tonight,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight...

And so on. Would this work here, do you think? Xindhus (talk) 11:03, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

"Pophyria's Lover" and Occam's Razor

I'm always fascinated by the attempts to impose on this poem incredibly complex, and often quite bizarre readings: Porphyria represents a urinary infection, Porphyria is the speaker's mother/sister/daughter, Porphyria is actually an alien visiting from another planet, etc. The problem with these readings is that, however ingenious, they depend too heavily either on information that is not in the poem, or they place too much emphasis on individual elements of the poem without reference to the rest of the poem, or to Browning's other works. Often, even readings from supposedly credible sources depend upon deliberate misreadings of what the poem actually does say; for instance, some sources claim that Porphyria is of higher social class because she has come from a feast to which the speaker was not invited, when in fact, the "feast" to which the speaker refers must be the encounter we're witnessing between the speaker and Porphyria.

The process of interpreting any text is establishing the most probable meaning based upon the evidence provided by the text itself. The best reading is that which accounts for most of the evidence of the poem, with the fewest contradictory or unaccounted for elements. The problem with most readings, aside from those that simply carelessly misread the actual words of the poem, is that they impose upon some word in the poem a meaning--either denotative or connotative--which requires a massive contortion in the most likely meanings of the other elements of the poem to be consistent, and thus they defy credibility. They impose on some image in the poem a meaning which, based upon the range of meanings developed by the poem taken as a whole, seems highly unlikely.

Or, they insert into the poem information that the poet deliberately excluded. Adding to a poem information that the poem does not itself provide is a violence to the poem's meaning. The fact that the poem is silent about something (for instance, from where Porphyria has come) is an indication that this information is irrelevant, and supplying it is to change the poem's meaning by putting information into the poem which was not before there. We really can't know the actual relationship between the speaker and Porphyria because it's not indicated in the poem. We can't know the "vainer ties" that Porphyria is unwilling to dissever to satisfy the speaker, and the fact that the poem doesn't tell us what they are indicates that they are unimportant to the poem. She could, for instance, be the speaker's wife and a servant in another household, which could result in her being away from home for weeks at a time (think of Polly in Dombey and Son), but there's no way to know from the poem itself, so speculation is pointless. The poem is not an examimination of social class in Victorian England, or of the difficulties of extramarital relationships; it's an examination of the disturbed psychology of the speaker, and the information that is provided provided by the text relates to this theme. All we can know for certain is that Porphyria has been away, and the speaker is resentful; the "vainer ties" are connections to anything other than him. When she arrives and brightens up the scene, he recognizes that she does love him, but is too weak to devote herself to him completely, as he wishes. He finds "a thing to do," which he imagines will satisfy her fondest wish (really his fondest wish), and by strangling her, believes he has made her happy. He is clearly, like the Duke of Ferrrara in "My Last Duchess," a psychopathic narcissist, who evaluates the need and behaviors of others only as they relate to himself. He believes she will be happy to be dead because it will allow him to control her completely, separated finally from the "vainer ties" that took her from him, whatever they may be. LewisLong (talk) 19:52, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Porphyria

I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion but here it goes: porphyria is not a urinary infection (as stated by others on this page) but a rare genetic disease of heam biosynthesis. Heam is a major part of haemoglobin found in red blood cells, and incorrect production leads to toxic accumulation of porphobilinogen. One of the clinical manifestations of this disease is psychosis, which is arguably one of the themes of this poem. Even though biochemical pathway was described after the poem was published (poem was published in 1836 and the pathway was described by Felix Hoppe-Seyler in 1874), the medical condition of porphyria was known long before that. It may be that the poem compares the love of the chief persona in the poem with the disorder. Hope this helps. --78.149.29.150 (talk) 10:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC) 3rd year Medical Student

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Original research

The section headed "Psychological interpretations" seems to consist largely of original research. Or, if that section is based on the findings of reliable sources, they aren't being cited. I'm sure there must be a lot written about this fascinating poem, we need to incorporate it properly into this article. Chuntuk (talk) 19:36, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

It's frankly quite stunning that this first-year undergraduate, uncited & purely speculative piece of literary criticism has been allowed to stand in the article for as long as it has. I'm minded to remove it wholesale. --2A00:23C6:8906:3901:D03D:A882:6CAC:28E2 (talk) 00:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)