From the Publisher
Art and Architecture in the Poetry of Robert Browning is a comprehensive study of the imagery in Browning's poetry. Thomas relates the allusive imagery of Browning to the art and architecture of Florence and Rome. He includes a map of both cities and more than 300 pictures of art and architecture, making the set of books an excellent travel guide as well as a reference tool. When using the Compendium and Appendix as a travel guide you might find yourself as an eighteenth century traveler, when literary works were used as guides instead of generic maps. The experience of visiting cities such as Rome and Florence, are made richer by Thomas. His books not only inform a traveler of the location of striking art works but also the context in which Browning used these pieces in his poetry.
From the Inside Flap
Charles Flint Thomas has resided abroad thirteen times over the last twenty-three years in order to observe firsthand the sources for the pictures, sculpture, and architecture that Robert Browning wrote about. The result is a comprehensive and detailed study in which approximately 100 of the some 500 items entered are advanced as original sources. For the first time there is a model for the tower in "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," several sources for the tomb in "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," a model for the bust in "The Statue and the Bust," a statue for "Cleon," a bust for "Protus," and, most important, the Castellani fleur de lis ring in The Ring and the Book - just to name art and architecture mentioned in titles of poems by Browning.
An additional original aspect of this work is the Summary of Composite Sources. The Summary advances the theory that Browning uses composite sources for about forty references to unspecified and imaginary art and architecture that conflate actual models known to Browning. Added to this is the symbolic analysis of two or three dozen sources based on primarily original interpretations. And, finally, there are numerous seldom-seen illustrations, identifications of a number of little known locations, and much new evidence supporting sources nominated by other scholars.
This study is basically organized as a descriptive reference tool. The body of the study consists of citations from over 70 of Browning's poems; notes presenting sources for the pictures, sculpture, and architecture described in the citations; and over 260 illustrations of the sources, about seventy per cent of which are in color. Other features are a Table of Chronology, which covers Browning's travels and readings as they pertain to his education in art history; an Index of Artists mentioned in Browning's poetry; an Index of Sources with Locations; an Index of Miscellaneous Sources; maps of Florence and Rome; and a key to Bibliography.
