French Literature and Poetry
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Abstract
Abstract
Robert Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” is usually read as a poem of speed, yet the news itself is never disclosed. This article argues that the omission redirects attention from message to transmission. Browning drafted the poem at sea, in pencil on the fly-leaf of Daniello Bartoli’s Simboli, a book whose title figures the carrying of signs into moral meaning; that material scene of composition helps clarify the poem’s own logic of transfer. Taken with the paired names Roland and Aix, that scene makes the lyric legible as a transposition of a Rolandian structure of transmission rather than as a direct borrowing from La Chanson de Roland. The medieval Roland’s signal reaches Charlemagne only at fatal bodily cost; Browning’s equine Roland arrives in time, but at the limit of endurance. The message is withheld so that the labor of its carrier becomes visible.
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@article{Zhang2026Leaf,
title = {On the Fly-Leaf of Bartoli’s Simboli : Browning’s “Good News” And La Chanson de Roland},
author = {Min Zhang and Su Chai},
journal = {ANQ A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1080/0895769x.2026.2733996},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769x.2026.2733996}
}FAQ
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