Sometimes poets can write the most absurd and questionable things. Even though that their writing is questionable at times, it is still worth the read. It makes you think about criminals in a new way, but sometimes, it can go to a more negative view. Robert Browning, a man who might not have had a teacher, self-taught himself in his father’s six thousand book library decided to become a poet. One of the many poems that he wrote, My Last Duchess, is about a man whose wife just died and he is looking into a new woman to marry. The poem starts out by him talking to an agent who was hired by the father of the woman he wants to marry. He shows the agent a portrait of his late wife, and says many creepy and disturbing things which is validated, “A Duke guides a guest around his art collection, including a portrait of his dead wife, was one of Browning's first (and arguably best) brilliant attempts at a dramatic monologue.” (MacNeice, Louis). The other poem, Porphyria’s Lover which is also by Robert Browning, is also another odd poem. This one is about a man who is waiting for his girlfriend in a cottage, and when she finally shows up, he is mad at her. She knows this and sits by him and puts his head on her shoulder and says that she loves him, as if she had to do this a hundred times before. Except this time is different, he knew she was at a party with other men and even though she didn’t give into temptation this time, she always could. However, she says that she worships him. He eventually came up with a solution; he took her hair, wrapped it three times around her neck, kills her and then lays her head on his shoulder. There is obviously something off about these two speakers from these poems. The two speakers from Robert Browning’...
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...fferent attitudes about what they have done to their lovers. Both of these speakers are psychotic, however they do still have apparent sanity.
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The persona’s possessiveness and lunacy is depicted by the poet through the use of diction. To begin with, the speaker’s character is portrayed in one way through the repetition of words in his speech, asserting his intended message. This is seen in his claim over Porphyria: “That moment she was mine, mine” (Browning, 36). His repetition of the possessive pronoun “mine” emphasizes his ownership of Porphyria. The repeated use of the word shows his aggressively selfish personality, because he completely...
"Robert Browning." Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol. 1. Englewood Cliffs: Salem, 1982. 338, 341.
I was gratified to see that this critic agreed with my interpretation of the Duchess’s demise, viz., the Duke had her murdered. The theory advanced by my brilliant and magnificent Professor had been that the Duke gave her so many orders and restrictions that she pined away. I had been looking at his famous line “And I choose/never to stoop.” He married her for her beauty but would never lower himself to tell her when she angered him.
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 3-23. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
Robert Browning was poet during the Victorian Age, his wrote about love and established this through his characters. His works explore the nature of love, as shown in “Porphria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess.” Throughout both poems, Robert Browning uses multiple literary devices to help establish the theme of the nature of love.
In essence, Elizabeth Barrett Browning dramatic monologue proved a powerful medium for Barrett Browning. Taking her need to produce a public poem about slavery to her own developing poetics, Barrett Browning include rape and infanticide into the slave’s denunciation of patriarchy. She felt bound by women’s silence concerning their bodies and the belief that “ a man’s private life was beyond the pale of political scrutiny” (Cooper, 46).
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue about a duke who is showing the portrait of his first wife, the duchess, to a servant of his future father-in-law, the Count. In a dramatic monologue, the speaker addresses a distinct but silent audience. Through his speech, the speaker unintentionally reveals his own personality. As such, in reading this poem, the reader finds the duke to be self-centered, arrogant, controlling, chauvinistic and a very jealous man. The more he attempted to conceal these traits, however, the more they became evident. There is situational irony (a discrepancy between what the character believes and what the reader knows to be true) in this because the duke does not realize this is what is happening. Instead, he thinks he appears as a powerful and noble aristocrat.
Ferguson, Margaret W. , Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry. shorter fifth edition. New York, New York: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2005. print.
Through her endeavors, this seems to be a new way of thoroughly expressing her admiration and vast affection for her husband. Emily Barrett Browning has proved herself a master poet. Not only does she use almost every literary device in the book, but she also delves deep into her feelings. These explanations of her feelings that she adds into the sonnets are rich in metaphors, alliteration, personification, and many more.
has a listener within the poem, but the reader of the poem is also one
Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol. 7.
A Comparison of the Dramatic Monologues of Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning