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My Last Duchess
1. Your thesis statement would depend on your critical analysis: what do you consider the most important theme or point of the poem? Is it that the Duke was jealous of his wife for not liking him...
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My Last Duchess
In the poem, the duke was unhappy with his wife for a number of reasons. First of all, in lines 14–15, the duke says that his wife often blushed at others. Specifically, this "spot of joy" on her...
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My Last Duchess
While both Browning and Robinson write of human relationships, these relationships in "My Last Duchess" and "Richard Cory" display more differences than they do similarities. IMAGES In Robert...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue spoken in first person by the Duke; "Richard Cory" is a ballad narrated in first person by a citizen who knew Cory from a distance. The poems have much in...
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My Last Duchess
In spite of the Duke's rather untrustworthy opinion of the Duchess, we can infer a number of physical and other attributes from what he says about her. It is pertinent that she was beautiful and...
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My Last Duchess
The first twenty one lines of the poem help us to understand the duke's possessiveness of his former wife: her portrait is kept behind a curtain that none are allowed to draw aside except him. We...
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My Last Duchess
The Duke's motive for speaking the monologue titled "My Last Duchess" is ostensibly to show his visitor part of his art collection, but it is actually to negotiate the dowry he can expect to...
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My Last Duchess
A critical appreciation focuses on the literary qualities of the poem rather than simply being a summary. Your introduction might mention that the poem was written by Robert Browning and first...
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My Last Duchess
My first instinct would be to warn the Count to take his daughter and run! This dramatic monologue that the Duke has with the Count's representative sounds like a thinly veiled warning of what he...
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My Last Duchess
The Count's representative jumps up without warning and starts to flee down the stairs. He is horrified by the Duke's character, which is what Browning intentionally reveals throughout the poem....
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue written by Robert Browning. That means that one person is speaking for the entire poem. In this case, the speaker is Duke Ferrara. Although there was a...
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My Last Duchess
The Duke has apparently invited the representative of the Count upstairs to see part of his art collection. But the real reason was so the two men could meet alone in order to discuss the matter of...
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My Last Duchess
I'm not sure if you are looking for a summary of the whole poem or just its conclusion, so I'm going to summarize the whole poem, and then you can pick from it whatever is useful to you: the whole...
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My Last Duchess
At first, it seems that the duke responded to the duchess's behavior by taking note of everything that seemed to make her happy: a cherry tree branch, a white mule, a sunset, the duke himself. The...
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My Last Duchess
Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" is what is known as a dramatic monologue. It consists of an extended speech given in the voice of a first person narrator, the Duke of Ferrara. It is set in...
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My Last Duchess
Yes, the theme of appearance vs. reality is important to this poem. The text appears to capture a well-mannered negotiation between the duke and the servant of a count, sent, presumably, to broker...
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My Last Duchess
The entire poem is geared toward a “portrait” of the Duke’s inhumanity and greed. The casual remark “I gave commands and all smiles stopped together” is a sinister hint as to his power...
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My Last Duchess
Duke Ferrara, the speaker in Robert Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess," wields absolute power within his sphere of influence. The poem gives insight into his power over artists and...
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My Last Duchess
Within the 56 lines of his dramatic monologue, Browning exposes not only Duke Ferrara but also the age in which he lived. That age was a time when a large number of landed aristocrats ruled over...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning is narrated in the first person by the Duke of Ferrara. Although he attempts to convey a positive impression, as with many of Browning's dramatic monologues,...
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Ozymandias
This is a great question; these are two of my favourite poems! Let's look at several ways you can compare these two poems. We can start by looking at the structure of these two poems. Both poems...
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My Last Duchess
As the poem "My Last Duchess" opens, the Duke shows a visitor a painted portrait of his former wife. Line 7 groups the hearer in with "strangers," so we can assume the visitor has never been there...
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My Last Duchess
The Duke of Ferrara who narrates "My Last Duchess" is what Browning would consider a prototypical Renaissance Italian character. He may be based on Alfonso II d'Este (22 November 1533 – 27...
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My Last Duchess
The action when the painting is shown to the ambassador "nay, nay, we'll go together down" implies that the Duke is giving a tour of the upstairs of his mansion, and he and the ambassador are going...
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My Last Duchess
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" is spoken from the perspective of a widowed duke to a servant of the Count whose daughter he now wishes to marry. For this reason, the last word of the...
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My Last Duchess
"Rough" and "un-poetic" are good terms to apply to "My Last Duchess." Robert Browning's dramatic monologues are intended to characterize the speaker as well as to present a dramatic narrative. In...
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My Last Duchess
The relationships depicted in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and Elizabeth Jennings's "One Flesh" are drastically different. In Browning's poem, the speaker, the Duke, is telling the story of...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" qualifies as a dramatic monologue because the entire poem is comprised of the speech of one person in a specific moment, and because we only know the actions of the person the...
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My Last Duchess
Robert Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess" is set in Italy, probably in the 1500s. It exhibits a social hierarchy that was in place then and patriarchal views that were common not only...
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My Last Duchess
To clarify the above answer, the fact that the Duke did not kill his wife himself but gave commands to have it done is inferable from the following lines. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I...
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My Last Duchess
[eNotes educators are only permitted to answer one question per posting. Additional questions need to be asked in a separate post.] Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" is my favorite of this...
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My Last Duchess
This is a good question. Most readers assume that the Duke is an unreliable narrator and that his negative insinuations about his dead wife are false. It is also normally assumed that the...
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My Last Duchess
In a sense, the entire poem is about physical or sensual gratification. The Duke himself is very much of a sensualist. His descriptions of his dead wife focus on her external, physical self and he...
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My Last Duchess
To answer this question plainly, no, the speaker in this poem has no regret for killing his previous Duchess. He committed murder simply because he thought the Duchess cast her eyes and smiled at...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning is written in the form of a dramatic monologue, in which the Duke is conducting an emissary around his palace as part of opening negotiations with the family of...
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My Last Duchess
It's helpful to understand, when you read and analyze this poem, that Browning based it on a true story. The duke in question is Alfonso II of Ferrara, Italy, of a family known for their...
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My Last Duchess
It is clear from the extract that the Duchess had no prejudice and that she treated everyone equally. She would compliment anyone and everyone she felt deserved praise for doing her a kindness. Her...
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My Last Duchess
The Duke is talking to an emissary of a count. The Duke is trying to marry the count's daughter, so he is trying to impress the emissary. In describing the painting of his most recent duchess, he...
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My Last Duchess
Throughout the Duke's monologue he reveals his vile character. He is an egomaniac. He is a name-dropper. He mentions the name Fra Pandolf early in his monologue because this artist was evidently...
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My Last Duchess
The speaker, the Duke, notes that when Fra Pandolf painted the portrait of his (Duke's) last duchess, he was present. The Duke felt he needed to be present because he wanted to control every aspect...
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My Last Duchess
Because the Duke is the first person narrator of the poem, he doesn't openly confess that he is by nature irrationally jealous. Instead, we must infer that from his attitude and obiter dicta....
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My Last Duchess
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My Last Duchess
In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess," the speaker, Duke Ferrara, is shown to be an extremely jealous man whose jealousy has led him to commit murder. Yet he does not believe...
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My Last Duchess
This is an excellent question, for the identity of speaker is central to understanding not only the relationship between the speaker and his wife, but also in better understanding his "last...
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My Last Duchess
The first twenty-one lines of the poem are quite detailed about the portrait. Firstly, we learn that the painting is of the speaker's last wife and that the portrait is quite vivid: Looking as if...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning is written in the form of a dramatic monologue. As in many of Browning's poems in this genre, the Duke reveals more about himself than he intends as he speaks....
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My Last Duchess
In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess," the Duchess meets an untimely end. Most readers infer that she was murdered by the Duke, but Browning himself answered the repeated...
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My Last Duchess
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning portrays only a limited subset of types of relationships between men and women. The poem is written in the form of a dramatic monologue, in which the Duke, a...
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My Last Duchess
The key to understanding the poem "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning is to understand how Browning uses the conventions of the dramatic monologue. In this, as in most of Browning's dramatic...
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My Last Duchess
Fine art is used as an example of how the Duke treats beautiful objects (Neptune taming a seahorse...) as conquered possessions of his, including his last duchess, whose portrait he treats with...