Robert BrowningRobert Browning (1812-89)(1812-89)

His poetry: dramatic monologues His poetry: dramatic monologues

• 1.taking fancy to Renaissance Italy;

• 2. dramatic monologues (his contribution to English poetry) in which he places his characters before the reader at some revealing moments of their life and let them speak for themselves,

• “telling the story from the inside”.

My Last DuchessMy Last Duchess

• A jealous tyrant Duke shows to the match-maker a picture of his late wife drawn by a monk artist, which caught her smile that brought about her death.

My Last Duchess My Last Duchess

• . Character analysis:

• The duke• cruel, despotic,jealous, hypocritical, selfish, arrow-mind

ed; • The duchess• gentle, kind, beautiful, noble-minded,democratic;• The agent• clever, silver-tongued,eloquent.•

My Last DuchessMy Last Duchess

• Discrepancy between the duke’s opinion and the reader’s opinon of himself and of his late wife:

• In his own opion, he is powerful, noble, benevolent,but he is despotic and cruel.

• He thought his late wife was frivolous,but the reader knows that she was noble-minde and the duke is selfish and jealous.

My Last DuchessMy Last Duchess

• Form of the poem

• 1.dramatic monologue: a type of poems in which a character, at some critical moment,addresses an identifiable but silent audience, thereby unwittingly revealing his or her real personality.

My Last DuchessMy Last Duchess

• Form of the poem

• 2.This poem is in something like heroic couplet as far as the meter and rhyme scheme is concerned.