1 ‘Speak from every mouth – the speech, a poem’: Conflicting Voices, Discourses and Identities in the Poetry of Robert Browning

It seems very difficult t o link autobiography with poetry in Browning’s poetical works because the author constantly and methodically hides behind masks and speakers, expecting his readers to take pleasure in unmasking each. In his epilogue to Men and Women (1855), Browning writes: “ … you saw me gather men and women, / Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, / Enter each and all, and use their service, / Speak from every mouth, […] ” (129-132). With these multiple characters, no speaker could be abusively identified with the poet, who thus became invisible but free to speak in the first person while using several voices. Through odd rhymes, dislocations of syntax and colloquialisms, Browning creates for each speaker a highly individual linguistic personality. The ‘action ’ in his poems is thus verbal and vocal. Some of these voices tell the ‘truth ’ when they precisely try to hide it and others hide the truth when they pretend to tell it openly, leaving the reader t