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A Note on Meter, Music, and Meaning in Robert Browning's Fifine at the Fair.(Critical Essay)

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From: Victorian Poetry
Date: 20010322
Author:HAIR, DONALD S.

WHILE MUSIC IS NOT ENTIRELY A NEGLECTED ASPECT OF FIFINE AT THE Fair--the dream vision is, after all, inspired by Juan's playing of Schumann's "Carnival"--the meter is little discussed. The link between music and meter, and the relation of both to the meaning, is the subject of this note. The meaning may be summed up in the two lines which are repeated often enough to become mottoes, both of which appear in the climactic section 124: "All's change, but permanence as well," and "God, man, or both together mixed." The latter is Browning's translation of line 116 of Aeschylus' ...

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