By Robert Browning A Study Guide | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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......."My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue, a poem with a character who presents an account centering on a particular topic. This character speaks all the words in the poem. During his discourse, the speaker intentionally or unintentionally reveals information about one or more of the following: his personality, his state of mind, his attitude toward his topic, and his response or reaction to developments relating to his topic . The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personal information, not the topic which the speaker happens to be discussing. The word monologue is derived from a Greek word meaning to speak alone. .......Browning first published poem under the title "I. Italy" in 1842 in Dramatic Lyrics, a collection of sixteen Browning poems. Brown changed the title of the poem to "My Last Duchess" before republishing it in 1849 in another collection, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. .......The
setting of "My Last Duchess," a highly acclaimed 1842 poem by Robert Browning,
is the palace of the Duke of Ferrara on a day in October 1564. Ferrara
is in northern Italy, between Bologna and Padua, on a branch of the Po
River. The city was the seat of an important principality ruled by the
House of Este from 1208 to 1598. The Este family constructed an imposing
castle in Ferrara beginning in 1385 and, over the years, made Ferrara an
important center of arts and learning. Two members of the family, Beatrice
and Isabella, supported the work of such painters as Leonardo da Vinci
and Raphael.
Speaker (or Narrator):
The speaker is the Duke of Ferrara. Browning appears to have modeled him
after Alfonso II, who ruled Ferrara from 1559 to 1597. Alfonso was married
three times but had no children. The poem reveals him as a proud, possessive,
and selfish man and a lover of the arts. He regarded his late wife as a
mere object who existed only to please him and do his bidding. He likes
the portrait of her (the subject of his monologue) because, unlike the
duchess when she was alive, it reveals only her beauty and none of the
qualities in her that annoyed the duke when she was alive. Morever, he
now has complete control of the portrait as a pretty art object that he
can show to visitors.
.......The portrait of the late Duchess of Ferrara is a fresco, a type of work painted in watercolors directly on a plaster wall. The portrait symbolizes the duke's possessive and controlling nature inasmuch as the duchess has become an art object which he owns and controls. ......."My Last Duchess" is in iambic pentameter, which has ten syllables, or five feet, per line. The ten syllables consist of five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. Lines 1 and 2 of the poem demonstrate the iambic-pentameter pattern. .......1.................2..................3.................4...............5Rhyme: Heroic Couplets .......Line 1 rhymes with line 2, line 3 with 4, line 5 with 6, and so on. Pairs of rhyming lines are called couplets. When the lines are written in iambic pentameter, as are the lines of "My Last Duchess," the rhyming pairs are called heroic couplets. Internal Rhyme Are
you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Or that in you disgusts me;
here you miss
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse (line 41) .......Upstairs
at his palace in October of 1564, the Duke of Ferrara–a city in northeast
Italy on a branch of the Po River–shows a portrait of his late wife, who
died in 1561, to a representative of the Count of Tyrol, an Austrian nobleman.
The duke plans to marry the count’s daughter after he negotiates for a
handsome dowry from the count.
By Robert Browning .
Arrogance .......The theme is the arrogant, authoritarian mindset of a proud Renaissance duke, who says, "I choose / Never to stoop" (lines 42-43). In this respect, the more important portrait in the poem is the one the duke "paints" of himself with his words. Women as Mere Objects .......Several lines in the poem suggest that the duke had treated his wife as a mere object. He expected her to be beautiful to look at, but little more. But the duchess was human; she had faults. When the duke became annoyed by them and by her smiling face, he "gave commands" that ended her smiling. In other words, he apparently ordered her to be killed. The word last in the title suggests that the young woman in the portrait was not the duke's first wife. One wonders whether his previous wife (or wives) met the same fate and whether his next duchess will end up like his "last duchess." .......In his poetry, Browning occasionally uses enjambment, a literary device in which the sense of one line of verse is carried over to the next line without a pause. Here is an example: Looking as if she were alive. I callNotice that scarcely belongs with the words that follow it, not with the words that precede it. Consequently, no pause occurs after it. Study Questions and Essay Topics 1. Do you believe the speaker
murdered his last duchess? Explain your answer.
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