A Poem in Twelve Volumes
Thirteen years after the publication of Men and Women, Browning revisited the first edition, and made a reclassification of it. He separated the simpler rhymed presentations of an emotional moment, such as Mesmerism and A Woman's Last Word, or the picturesque rhymed verse telling a story of an experience, such as Childe Roland and The Statue and the Bust, from their more complex companions, such as Cleon, Fra Lippo, and Rudel. The resulting collection of only twelve poems is typically found today in many abridged editions of Men and Women, and in the somewhat more accurately titled volume, Transcendentalism: A Poem In Twelve Volumes.
Read more about this topic: Men And Women (poetry Collection), Transcendentalism
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