Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
RBarzellato - My last duchess
by - (2013-05-22)
Up to 5A - Victorian Poetry and the Dramatic Monologue
The text is a R. Browing's dramatic monologue. Just considering the title the reader understands there are two keywords: "last" and "my". The first keyword reminds the past; the duchess is the duke's last one but why is she the last? Is she dead? The reader has to go on reading to answer to these questions but s/he understands that there are no more duchess. Besides, the word "my" emplies an additional meaning: the duke speaks about the duchess as his duchess and so the reader understands the speaking voice is possessive.
After that there is a reference about the setting. "Ferrara" adds to the title an Italian setting and the reader might expect Ferrara could be the setting of the poem. It sounds unusual to an English public but it allows the reader to better understand the poet's allusion: the event may allude to Alfonso II d'Este who murdered Lucrezia Borgia.
Just considering the layout the reader can notice that the poem is not arranged into stanzas.
The story is about a duke who invites his listeners to sit and admire his wife's fresco. The fresco is connoted as "wonder" and it reminds to the perfect realism of the picture. From the choices of the fresco the reader understands that the poem is set during the Renaissance, a period in which portraits were very common and important. But the function of the duchess' portrait is different from the other Renaissance portraits: it seems a prison; the duchess will be possessed by the duke forever. It goes without saying that the duke is a possessive and violent man as the words "my", "but thanked somehow" show. Indeed he murdered his wife because he was too jealous about the duchess' attitude with other men ("but who passed without much the same smile?").
Regarding the language there are lots of markness of the use of an informal language "now", "will't please", "cherries",... It is innovative: for the first time there is a mixture between informal language and poetry. Another innovation is the structure. The intelligent reader realizes that some parts of the text is just juxtaposed, without any logical connection and so it precedes the stream of consciousness technique.
To conclude I think a very interesting device is that through the duke's speech the reader understands much more about himself than about the duchess (expressions like "how shall I say?" or "I know not how", show the hidden part of the character's mind) and s/he also can suppose that the duke was the murderer of the poor woman.
After that there is a reference about the setting. "Ferrara" adds to the title an Italian setting and the reader might expect Ferrara could be the setting of the poem. It sounds unusual to an English public but it allows the reader to better understand the poet's allusion: the event may allude to Alfonso II d'Este who murdered Lucrezia Borgia.
Just considering the layout the reader can notice that the poem is not arranged into stanzas.
The story is about a duke who invites his listeners to sit and admire his wife's fresco. The fresco is connoted as "wonder" and it reminds to the perfect realism of the picture. From the choices of the fresco the reader understands that the poem is set during the Renaissance, a period in which portraits were very common and important. But the function of the duchess' portrait is different from the other Renaissance portraits: it seems a prison; the duchess will be possessed by the duke forever. It goes without saying that the duke is a possessive and violent man as the words "my", "but thanked somehow" show. Indeed he murdered his wife because he was too jealous about the duchess' attitude with other men ("but who passed without much the same smile?").
Regarding the language there are lots of markness of the use of an informal language "now", "will't please", "cherries",... It is innovative: for the first time there is a mixture between informal language and poetry. Another innovation is the structure. The intelligent reader realizes that some parts of the text is just juxtaposed, without any logical connection and so it precedes the stream of consciousness technique.
To conclude I think a very interesting device is that through the duke's speech the reader understands much more about himself than about the duchess (expressions like "how shall I say?" or "I know not how", show the hidden part of the character's mind) and s/he also can suppose that the duke was the murderer of the poor woman.