An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish summary

The poem in which he uses many form to actually come up with what he intends to portray in the outcome, he includes a speaker and an identifiable audience to make the poem as interesting as possible and also to make it have the drama in which he intends to portray in the poem majorly, (Browning, 14). The monologue brought about by Browning at many times contain styles such as; dramatic irony, this refers to a situation whereby the reader of the poem on the other hand is made to understand something, a little or a lot about the speaker, and this actually is by his own words that are used in the poem and majorly these words are not known by the speaker himself.

In analyzing Brownings oriental vision in the poem, evidence is seen at what his vision was in each and every stanza and this is through what he actually wants to put out in the stanzas as they came along. The poem in itself has several stanzas that are connected in one way or the other. The first stanza has twenty lines, that is from the first to the twentieth line where, the Speaker Karshish, makes some greetings to his mentor Abib in a very respectful manner and addresses as ‘his sage’ and on the other hand refers to himself as a mere ‘vagrant scholar’. In his travel there are various destinations where he mentions to have been to and among them are Bethany and Jerusalem.

All this just made it clear that most of his travel was in located too in Palestine. Robert Browning’s “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” is another fine example of dramatic monologue in which the character speaking reveals things about himself he is unaware of, but through the irony of self-disclosure, the reader readily sees. “Browning was a Christian in Victorian England who, in many of his poems, engaged serious intellectual objections to Christianity,” (Rovere et al, 66). In this regard Rovere said “Robert Browning’s poem is very dramatic and reveals a lot of things about both the speaker and the poet” “Karshish the Arab Physician” is a poem that purports to be a letter from Karshish to his mentor in the medical arts, Abib.

” This sampling of medical knowledge is just the beginning of Karshish’s ironic self-disclosures. In fact, he declares that he doesn’t know whether the Syrian who is carrying the letter to Abib will steal it and the enclosed (valuable!) cure, as Karshish had “blown up his nose to help the ailing eye” (51). What cure for the Syrian’s eye he had squirted up the man’s nose is anyone’s guess, but the Syrian man was delivering the letter as payment for the treatment? After he has introduced himself and proven his medical prowess, Karshish goes on to delicately introduce the Lazarus story by saying, is but a case of mania. of trance prolonged unduly some three days. ” that was caused by epilepsy or “some drug” (79-81, 82).

Here the reader, no doubt chuckling by now, knows that it is Karshish himself who is “steeped in conceit. sublimed by ignorance. ” There are many Browning scholars who believe the irony in the poem is a satiric comment on German Higher Criticism, a well-known assault on the historicity of the Scriptures in Browning’s day. On this view, Karshish and Abib represent historians and theologians who, thinking they are using the latest in research techniques, are hopelessly unable to apprehend the truth of traditional Christianity. Knowing Browning’s critique of Higher Criticism in a number of his other poems, this view seems likely. In his words Edward Said said ‘this is actually the projection of those aspects of the west, the westerners do not in any way want to acknowledge their selves in various ways’ this can also be attributed to the sayings of Robert Browning as he also strives so much to portray various cultures and among them being the western cultures.

(Orientalism, published in 1978) His timely text was a polemic necessary for speaking a variety of truths to both the intellectual and political currents of the day. Whether one idealizes his text or recognizes its manifest faults, the force of his polemic sparked a debate that successfully challenged the rigid binary of East/West and inspired a wide range of critical scholarship across disciplines. In 2007 I published Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, a critical survey of Orientalism, the text, and the extensive debate pro-and-con over both it and its author. As I stated in the “To the Reader” of my book, my intent was Because my survey documented the historical errors and theoretical problems with his use of Foucault’s “discourse” and Gramsci’s “egemonia” in his text,4some critics have assumed I am following in the curmudgeon mold of old-school historian Bernard Lewis.

When it comes to religion this then is the Christian view but in Browning he does not entirely believe in the religious perspective though he is said to believe a lot of religious beliefs. In his own argument he says that each and every man was put on earth with a totally different purpose altogether and it is their duty to fulfil this and each and every man is like is in a probation in this life altogether. According to Brownings view of Life is that it has given him as a test of his quality; this is shown as he is exposed to various things such as the chances of things and also the ways in which they are handled and changes of existence in certain ways altogether, Actually in his words he says “the way Browning mentions things is common in a way altogether”, (Loucks, 92).

“This then shows that to the opposition he shows a different view of the entanglement of circumstances that are always there in one way or the other, these are such as to evil being one of them, to doubt the other one, to the influence and in this regard of his fellow-men, this is then pointed to the conflicting powers that are of his own soul altogether; after all this said and done man actually succeeds or in the other bad side fails, toward God, or as regards his real end and aim, according as he is true or false to his better nature, his conception of right,” (Robertson, 101). The poem by Brownings is actually in form of a letter and it is on the other side a very good example of a great dramatic monologue hence making it very interesting.

I can conclude also that the stanzas show a lot about the speaker, In this regard the Speaker Karshish, makes greetings to his mentor Abib in a very respectful manner and addresses as ‘his sage’ this only shows that the speaker is very respectful and does only the good making him a caring person and on the other hand refers to himself as a mere ‘vagrant scholar’ and I can conclude the speaker is not selfish. Karshish begins his letter by describing himself as “the picker-up of learning’s crumbs, and this shows how much concern he is bringing out clearly a more vision” a “vagrant scholar” who sends to “Abib, all sagacious in our art” “three samples of Another conclusion I made was that the stanzas brings me to a point of thought to actually conclude that Browning in his own way is different from many other poets from what he does differently from the other poets that we are used to in the day to day activities that we do or the various poets that we read from who strive to prove out things that are not in a way that Browning shows his point to be.

In his own way we can see that Browning's view of him, is God's witness, and must see and speak for God. And this view actually makes it easy to see his vision of the eternity and life after death and this makes his vision more clear as he introduces the topic on religion. Although earlier in the paper I have shown how much we don’t know the religion to which the poet supports evidence is clear that the poet believes in a supreme being God and this to some extent really matters in determining the way in which he focuses his vision all over the poem.  Robert Browning's Poetry. W. W. Norton & Co. Browning, Robert et al. T. "Book Review: His In Joyous Experience: Paul’.