"ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD"
Sir,-I am sorry to see The Listener (though perhaps half in joke) falling into the current error about the famous lines of Pippa’s, On ‘the ground that he said "God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world," critics of our time persist in convicting Browning of unjustified optimism. How, they ask in effect, can a poet say "all’s right with the world" when there is obviously so much wrong with it? But Browning did not say anything of the sort. Browning put the lines into the mouth of a mill-girl enjoying her one holiday in the year by
walking in the country. She doesn't describe "19th Century Italy" as The Listener suggests. She doesn’t express Browning’s philosophy. She just puts into words her own mood on a special occasion, just as you and I, on a fine spring morning, might exclaim how good
it was to be alive.-
A.
M.
(Wellington).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19430507.2.9.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 202, 7 May 1943, Page 3
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157"ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD" New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 202, 7 May 1943, Page 3
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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