SOURCE: Danahay, Martin A. “Monologism and Power in Victorian Autobiography.” Victorians Institute Journal 21 (1993): 47-69.

In the following essay, Danahay focuses on the tension between the monologic and dialogic (and likewise the unitary and social) qualities of language illustrated in the autobiographical works of John Stuart Mill, Edmund Gosse, and Matthew Arnold.

Ashton Nichols in a recent article in the Victorians Institute Journal on Browning's monologues analyzed the ways in which Browning's poems imply the suppression of other voices that a reader must reconstruct in order to understand the effaced context of the utterance. Nichols used Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of “monologism” to explicate the process at work in Browning's monologues. “Many of Browning's speakers,” Nichols pointed out, “are striving to gain power over an individual or a situation,” (31) and attempt to silence unsettling voices that challenge their power. For Browning's speakers, monologism therefore grants them power over the social...