poem text

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poetry presentation web

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• Set up situation
• The Duke of Ferrara is negotiating a marriage with the daughter of the nearby count. As he and the ambassador is walking down the stairs, presumably from the negotiations, they pass by a painting of the Duke’s last Duchess. The poem is the conversation (rather one-side) that they have about the painting and the former wife.
• Read poem
• Form- Iambic pentameter; “open” heroic couplets
• Explain dramatic monologue
• If one wants to fully appreciate Browning’s poetry, one must have some understanding of the dramatic monologue
• Use in this poem
• Duke’s use of subtle rhetoric to hint at what he did and what he expects from his new wife
• Unwittingly reveals his rather possessive and misogynistic character.
• Review literary terms and exhaustively analyze poem (terms can be found here)
• literary criticism
• historical-biographical
• feminist
• compare with John Donne’s The Sun Rising
• modernist vs. Victorian
• enjambment and caesura
• monologue
• compare with other feminist poems
• Browning is more extreme
• Only one to use dramatic dialogue
• Browning does not directly address the issue, but infers that women are indeed marginalized.
• quickly go over activities
• IF THERE’S TIME (do crossword together. Yay!)