ABSTRACT
Robert Browning-although not yet the subject of a great deal of scholarship that could be described as “ecocritical”—was the Victorian poet who, as much as any other, saw the plant and the animal kingdoms as central aspects of his work as a lyricist. From his earliest Shelleyan verses in the 1820s, up through the masterpiece lyrics, dramatic monologues, and other poems of the 1830s-1860s, all the way to the now-obscure narrative, dramatic, and translated verses of the 1870s and 1880s, Browning saw the natural world as a crucial index for understanding our human world and the nonhuman reality that surrounds us. For him, “nature” was not so much a category distinguished by its “otherness” as it was a part of a continuum of living creatures and even nonliving entities. These natural elements help us to understand and appreciate our place, as Homo sapiens, the most fully selfaware beings on earth.
