1. Robert Browning ( )

2. His Life: Dramatic Monologues
- Not popular until nearly 60 due to his dark and twisted poetry.
- Poetic prodigy writing at 5 and publishing first work at 12. Father had library of 6,000 books which aided in this literary process.
- Ran away to Italy and eloped with Elizabeth Barret where they lived happily for 15 years before she died
- Dramatic monologues (his contribution to English poetry) in which he places his characters before the reader at some revealing moments of their life and let them speak for themselves, “telling the story from the inside”.

3. Porphyria’s Lover In this poetic monologue, that is simply complex!
The speaker relates that Porphyria has come on a rainy night to say that she loves him but cannot free herself from “pride” or “vainer ties” (his words) to be true to him.
The juxtapositioning of (way he puts side by side) the harsh, stormy weather with Porphyria’s return to the cottage emphasizes the dark yet innocent feelings within the speakers heart
He describes strangling her so that she will always be his, and he reveals that he now sits beside her corpse.
He sits with her body this way the entire night, the speaker remarking that God has not yet moved to punish him.
Porphyria could have also been a metaphor to a disease.