By Shelby Peck | Staff Writer
Armstrong Browning Library & Museum hosted its annual Browning Day on Thursday, with a guest lecture by Dr. Kevin Morrison, detailing the significance of Fano, Italy, and Robert Browning’s poem “The Guardian Angel.”
Morrison serves as a professor of British literature at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, but is currently a visiting scholar at the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum. His lecture focused on the “The Guardian Angel,” a poem Morrison said is one of Browning’s least studied.
“Browning’s composition of ‘The Guardian Angel’ began with a picture,” Morrison said.
While in Fano, Italy, with his wife, Morrison said Browning came upon a church housing “L’angelo Custode,” a painting by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri depicting a child perched on a tomb. A guardian angel clasps the child’s hands in prayer and together they gaze at three cherubs in the heavens.
“What I want to emphasize here is that the material world of objects did not always serve as an impetus for Browning,” Morrison said.
Documenting a largely unrecognized shift in Browning’s literary development, Morrison argues “The Guardian Angel” asks to be read as a poem about the relationship between person and object, a picture of Browning’s “imaginative thinking” and “compositional process.”
“The ‘Guardian Angel’ is the first poem that Browning composed after his marriage. It reflects the [encouragement] Elizabeth had given him to speak in his own voice,” Morrison said. “As a result, critics have tended to read this voice with faint or explicit embarrassment.”
“The Guardian Angel” — an autobiographical poem written in “religiously expressive lyrical voice,” — emphasizes Browning’s interest in individual paintings rather than the “visual cornucopia” of overwhelming art galleries, Morrison said. Although as a child Browning frequently visited art galleries with his father, his interest in art was independent and largely focused on religious, transcendent themes.
“What Browning emphasizes in these stanzas is the painting’s capacity in its beauty and magnificent pathos, to stimulate an affective response to what cannot be apprehended rationally,” Morrison said. “As Browning notes the painting speaks first of the soul before it generates the thought, what becomes the basis of the poem.”
Morrison also said the aim of “The Guardian Angel” is to realize the intensity of passion and perception, recognizing the emotive nature of Italian painting. Browning not only aimed to evoke a “sensory experience” in his readers, but also hoped for himself to become “reacquainted with his own latent spiritual capacities” by relearning to pray.
Morrison’s lecture was largely attended by members of the Lifelong Learning program at Mayborn Museum who completed a three-week long course on the Brownings. Also in attendance were Baylor students and faculty ranging from deep knowledge or introductory experience with poetry.
“I focus on prose fiction, but I like what the Armstrong Browning Library does so I go—I could always learn more about poetry,” Sarah Tharp, a doctoral candidate for English, said.
Tharp said she saw advertising for the event on Armstrong Browning Library’s Instagram, an account she follows as she is heavily interested in 19th century literature.
“It was really helpful how he traced Browning’s development as a poet. … He constructed a very clear, explanatory narrative and helped point to a shift in the poetry,” Tharp said.
Laura French, associate librarian and curator at Armstrong Browning Library, said it is important for Baylor students to attend events such as Morrison’s lecture because they are part of the education for which students pay.
“It’s just an opportunity to learn something else in a short, concise, manageable hopefully dose,” French said.
Through tuition and the generous funds of Baylor patrons, French said students should grasp each opportunity to learn something new, even if it is outside of class.
“Armstrong Browning Library is for the students, and so they should take advantage of absolutely every opportunity the [library] puts on for them,” French said.
