Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is a poem by English author Robert Browning, written on January 2nd, 1852[1] and first published in 1855 in the collection titled Men and Women.[2]

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came painted by Thomas Moran in 1859.

Inspiration

The title, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", which forms the last words of the poem, is a line from William Shakespeare's play King Lear (ca. 1607). In the play, Gloucester's son, Edgar, lends credence to his disguise as Tom o' Bedlam by talking nonsense, of which this is a part:

Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word was still "Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man."[3]

— King Lear, Act 3, scene 4, lines 195-197

Browning claimed that the poem came to him in a dream.[4]

Structure

Browning explores Roland's journey to the Dark Tower in 34 six line stanzas with the rhyme form A-B-B-A-A-B and iambic pentameter. It is filled with images from nightmare but the setting is given unusual reality by much fuller descriptions of the landscape than was normal for Browning at any other time in his career. In general, however, the work is one of Browning's most complex. This is, in part, because the hero's story is glimpsed slowly around the edges; it is subsidiary to the creation of an impression of the hero's mental state.

Setting and content

The name Roland, references to his slughorn (a pseudo-medieval instrument which only ever existed in the mind of Thomas Chatterton and Browning himself), general medieval setting, and the title childe (a medieval term not for a child but for an untested knight) suggest that the protagonist is the paladin of The Song of Roland, the 11th century anonymous French chanson de geste, among other works.

The poem opens with Roland's speculations about the truthfulness of the man who gives him directions to the Dark Tower. Browning does not retell the Song of Roland; his starting point is Shakespeare. The gloomy, cynical Roland seeks the tower and undergoes various hardships on the way, although most of the obstacles arise from his own imagination. Upon reaching the Tower, Roland finds all those who failed to reach the tower, and under it he finally shouts "Childe Roland to the dark tower came". What Roland finds inside the tower is not revealed.

Interpretation

William Lyon Phelps proposes three different interpretations of the poem: In the first two, the Tower is a symbol of a knightly quest. Success only comes through failure or the end is the realisation of futility. In his third interpretation, the Tower is simply damnation.

For Margaret Atwood, Childe Roland is Browning himself, his quest is to write this poem, and the Dark Tower contains that which Roland/Browning fears most: Roland/Browning "in his poem-writing aspect".[5]

Influences on, and references in, other works

"Childe Roland" has served as inspiration to a number of popular works of fiction, including:

  • American author Stephen King for his The Dark Tower series of stories and novels (1978–2012).
  • African-American author Countee Cullen for "From the Dark Tower" poem (1927)
  • American author Alexander Theroux based his story "Childe Roland" (in Three Wogs, 1972) on Browning's poem.[6]
  • Welsh science fiction author Alastair Reynolds for the "Diamond Dogs" novella (2001).
  • Canadian science-fiction author Gordon R. Dickson for his "Childe Cycle" series of novels (1959–2001).
  • American science-fiction author Andre Norton for the fourth novel in her "Witch World" series (1967).
  • Elidor (1965) by English writer Alan Garner.
  • Louise Berridge claims that Childe Roland was the inspiration behind the main character in her Chevalier series of novels.[7]
  • The 'Doctor Who' Twentieth Anniversary special 'The Five Doctors' takes much imagery and several key phrases from the poem which has been cited as a source by screenwriter Terrance Dicks.
  • British novelist A. S. Byatt for the character Roland Michell (and perhaps his formidable love interest Maud Bailey ("bailey"="tower")) in her novel Possession: A Romance (1990).
  • 'The Dark Tower', a radio play written by Louis MacNeice with incidental music by Benjamin Britten which was first broadcast on 21 January 1946 on the BBC's Home Service (now Radio 4).[8] This play follows the basic theme of the original with references to the quest, the dark tower, and the trumpet.[9] A new production was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 from Orford Church on 28 October 2017.[10]
  • Willa Cather's The Burglar's Christmas.
  • In The Dark Tower (1977) by CS Lewis, a tower set in a dystopian future is named the Dark Tower after Browning's poem. This name also lends itself to the unfinished manuscript, and the book it was published in.
  • In Anthony Powell's 12-part cycle A Dance to the Music of Time, the eighth novel, The Soldier's Art, takes its title from line 89 of Childe Roland ("Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier's art").
  • John Connolly's novel The Book of Lost Things (2006).
  • Roger Zelazny's novel Sign of the Unicorn (1975) refers to the song and the poem (part of The Chronicles of Amber series).
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem I Am Waiting refers to Childe Rowland coming 'to the final darkest tower'.
  • P.G. Wodehouse's novel The Mating Season: Jeeves uses the phrase 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came' to describe Bertie Wooster's arrival at Deverill Hall. Bertie does not understand the reference.[11]
  • P.G. Wodehouse's novel The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves also uses the phrase 'Childe Roland to the dark tower came' to describe Bertie Wooster's arrival, in this case, at Totleigh Towers. Bertie does not understand the reference in this case either.[12]
  • Neil Gaiman's Sandman character, Charles Rowland, one of the Dead Boy Detectives, is a reference to Childe Roland, particularly in his The Children's Crusade miniseries (1993), which prominently features a dark tower, a motif later picked up by the Books of Magic series.
  • Characters of Philip Jose Farmer's series Riverworld quote passages of the poem and make allusions to the dark tower in their quest.
  • By Blood We Live, the third book in Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf series.
  • Susan Howe argues in My Emily Dickinson that the poem is critical to Dickinson's "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -" (Fr 764)
  • In Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee, Uncle Jack calls Scout Childe Roland because she is on a quest to understand why Maycomb is so different than it used to be.
  • The song "The Dark Tower", by progressive metal band Sky Empire, is based in large part upon Childe Roland.
  • Leah Bodine Drake's poem Haunted Hour (1941).
gollark: Technically, I pay VAT, but as I do not actually have any income I don't have to pay taxes.
gollark: I expect America would mess up government-provided healthcare too, honestly.
gollark: What if I want to do tax evasion instead?
gollark: You mean paid-for-by-other-people education, yes.
gollark: It's been argued that it works as a signal to employers that you are at least vaguely competent enough to do something for 4ish years, able to stick to it for that time, and have some basic level of intelligence, more than providing much educational value.

References
  1. Turner, W. Craig (1987). "Browning, "'Childe Roland,'" and the Whole Poet". South Central Review. 4 (4): 40–52. doi:10.2307/3189026. ISSN 0743-6831. JSTOR 3189026.
  2. Huebenthal, John (1966). "The Dating of Browning's "Love Among the Ruins," "Women and Roses," and "Childe Roland"". Victorian Poetry. 4 (1): 51–54. ISSN 0042-5206. JSTOR 40001335.
  3. "Folger Digital Texts". www.folgerdigitaltexts.org. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  4. Kennedy, Richard; Hair, Donald (2007). The Dramatic Imagination of Robert Browning: A Literary Life. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-8262-1691-5.
  5. Atwood, Margaret (2002). Negotiating with the Dead. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 33. ISBN 0-521-66260-5.
  6. Steven Moore, "Alexander Theroux: An Introduction," Review of Contemporary Fiction 11.1 (Spring 1991): 10-13.
  7. Berridge, Louise. "André de Roland". A.L.Berridge - Author. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  8. "Louis MacNeice Biography". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  9. MacNeice, Louis (1947). The Dark Tower and other radio scripts. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
  10. "The Dark Tower". BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  11. Wodehouse, P.G. (2008). The Mating Season. London: Arrow Books. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-09-951377-3.
  12. Wodehouse, P.G. (2011) [1938]. The Code of the Woosters. London: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-393-33981-9.
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