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Dictionary

Dramatic monologue:  a kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent ‘audience' of one or more persons. Such poems reveal not the poet's own thoughts but the mind of the impersonated character, whose personality is revealed unwittingly; this distinguishes a dramatic monologue from a lyric, while the implied presence of an auditor distinguishes it from a soliloquy. Major examples of this form in English are Tennyson's ‘Ulysses' (1842), Browning's ‘Fra Lippo Lippi' (1855), and T. S. Eliot's ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' (1917).

The Dramatic Monologue

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Lord Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses

Tennyson's Ulysses

Activity

ROBERT BROWNING

The text

R. Browning and his My Last Duchess

The evolution of the dramatic monologue

The Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood (teacher's notes)