Robert Browning: My Last Duchess

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Poetry: Robert Browning: My last Duchess Question: What is Dramatic Monologue? Show that “My Last Duchess” is a successful Dramatic monologue. Answer: Dramatic Monologue : In literature, “Dramatic Monologue” refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. We can say that the term that deals with a character (the speaker) who addresses a distinct but silent audience imagined to be present in the poem in such a way as to reveal a dramatic situation and often unintentionally some aspect of his or her temperament or personality, is called “Dramatic monologue”. M. H. Abrams says, “ Dramatic monologue is a speech that is written as if spoken by an imagined character, in his or her voice and tone. It is 'dramatic' because it comes from a character created by the author in the manner of that character speaking or thinking out loud. It is a 'monologue' because it comes from one character only. Dramatic monologues are usually complete within themselves and written as prose or poetry, not within the confines of a play or dramatic event.” “My Last Duchess” is a successful Dramatic monologue : Browning’s ‘My last Duchess’ can be considered as a unique model of dramatic monologue. This piece of work of Browning has added a dimension to the world of literature., David Daiches says, “The Whole poem is but the visible part of the iceberg but the submerged invisible part is not a matter of vague suggestiveness; it is both psychologically and historically defined.” The poem is a beautiful study of soul-dissection in its short dramatic form. From our reading of this poem, the Duke of Ferrara emerges as unscrupulous, selfish, tyrannical and arrogant, emerges as an individual as well as a typical nobleman of the Italian Renaissance. We form the idea of the Duchess from the words of Duke himself. She is frank,

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