ENGL 1F95 Lecture 9 (In-Person)

Section 1 à October 9th, 2021

Items to work on during reading week:

□ start reading Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

- Dramatic Monologue Conventions:

o a single speaker (who is clearly a persona) utters a speech that makes up the
whole of the poem

o speaker addresses one or more listeners/auditors

§ all we know about the listener(s) is what we learn from the speaker

o main objective is for the poet to reveal the speaker’s character through what the
speaker says
§ depending on what is revealed, we can get a sense of the poet’s tone
regarding the speaker

- tone: the particular attitude displayed in the text toward the subject(s) under discussion
o either critical or approving
o poet/author is working through a subject to either critique or promote/approve of our
attitude towards the subject

- irony: refers to the idea that there is some sort of distance between what is being
expressed and what is meant
o between what is on the surface and what is true

Types of Irony:
o Verbal Irony: occurs when the meaning that is implied differs from what is literally
expressed (ex: sarcasm)
§ often referred to as sarcasm, but the terms should only be used to describe
the taunting use of praise to indicate criticism
§ not all verbal irony is sarcasm

o Structural Irony: occurs when the writer introduces a structural feature that serves to
sustain a double meaning throughout a work
§ dramatic monologues use structural irony
§ for ex. Naïve narrator or unreliable narrator>a child/criminal/psychopath
§ Tone can be a form of structural irony

o Dramatic Irony: occurs when the reader or audience knows something that the
characters don’t know

• Ex. Knowing that Juliet was not "dead" when Romeo found her body
 Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

Description:
- “voice” is a persona
- genre is a dramatic monologue
- entire poem is written in rhyming couplets
- prevalent use of enjambment and caesura disguises the perfection of rhythmic and rhyming
pattern
- the structure of the poem frames the story of the Duke’s response to his wife’s “glad” heart
with reference to two pieces of art: painting of his late wife, kept behind a curtain and the
sculpture of Neptune taming a seahorse

Elements of the dramatic monologue:

1) who’s speaking and what is the occasion for the speech?

• If this was a play, what would the rest of the scene look like?
• Where and When is this?

2) who is the listener/auditor?

• how does the poet give us clues about the listener?
• why is the choice of auditor significant?

3) what is the attitude towards the speaker’s character?

• how is the speaker being characterized?
• what are we supposed to feel about the character? critical or approving? why is
this interesting?

Selected analysis of Browning’s

“My Last Duchess” as a dramatic monologue

• The situation for the speech requires the reader to focus on the painting of the Duchess; this focus,
together with the Duke’s insistence on the beauty of the “pictured countenance” (7), indicates that
Browning wishes to draw attention to the Duke’s prizing of a woman’s external appearance.

• Though the occasion for the Duke’s speech is his interest in marrying again, it is significant that the
auditor of the speech is not the woman he wishes to marry, or even her father, but rather an agent
of “The Count” (49); the choice of such a silent auditor indicates that, for the Duke, the woman he
marries is merely an object to be negotiated for.

• The Duke uses understatement and euphemism to describe his resentment of his wife and the fact
that he caused her death; his claim that he has no “skill/in speech” (35-6) is ironic, as the Duke
reveals throughout his speech that he is a brilliant rhetorician.

• The tone of the poem is disapproving, as Browning’s portrayal of the Duke’s arrogance is meant to
be read as ironic.