Robert Browning (1812-89)

1. Robert Browning(1812-89)

2. His Life • Father loved art and literature; Mother pursued music and nature • Browning started reading by age five • Wrote first poem by age six • Read from his father's rare book collection, aquired a broad range of different literatures • Married Elizabeth Barret, a famous poet

3. His poetry: dramatic monologues Taking fancy to Renaissance Italy Dramatic monologues “Telling the story from the inside”

4. His poetry: dramatic monologues Dramatic monologue in poetry, also known as a persona poem, shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet speaks through an assumed voice—a character, a fictional identity, or a persona Dramatic monologue: a type of poems in which a character, at some critical moment,addresses an identifiable but silent audience, thereby unwittingly revealing his or her real personality.

5. My Last Duchess A jealous tyrant Duke shows to the match-maker a picture of his late wife drawn by a monk artist, which caught her smile that brought about her death.

6. My Last Duchess . Character analysis: The duke cruel, despotic,jealous, hypocritical, selfish, arrow-minded; The duchess gentle, kind, beautiful, noble-minded,democratic; The agent clever, silver-tongued,eloquent.

7. My Last Duchess Discrepancy between the duke’s opinion and the reader’s opinon of himself and of his late wife: In his own opion, he is powerful, noble, benevolent,but he is despotic and cruel. He thought his late wife was frivolous,but the reader knows that she was noble-minde and the duke is selfish and jealous.

8. My Last Duchess Form of the poem 1.dramatic monologue: a type of poems in which a character, at some critical moment,addresses an identifiable but silent audience, thereby unwittingly revealing his or her real personality.

9. My Last Duchess Form of the poem 2.This poem is in something like heroic couplet as far as the meter and rhyme scheme is concerned.