Robert Browning英国文学 教学课件.pptVIP

Robert Browning 1812－1889 I. Intro: The most important Victorian poet after Tennyson A. Family environment B. Early Career of writing Pauline (1833), Paracelsus (1835), Sordello (1840) ——more of a subjective immaturity Bells and Pomegranates (written bt. 1841-1846) ——techniques of dramatic writing C. Love and Courtship of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett 1845 met, 1846 got married and eloped to Italy. 1861, Elizabeth died  D. Later Works Men and Women (1855) ——intense interest in the Italian Renaissance, mastery of the poetic form－the dramatic monologue Dramatis Personae (1869) The Ring and the Book (1868-1869) ——longest and most ambitious, a single murder story from ten different points of view E. Public Fame II. Two characteristics of Browning’s poetry A. Interest in psychology Openness to evil, obsessive, and abnormal Objectivity B. Stylisitc experimentation Rough colloquial diction and word order Grotesque rhymes III. Poems Study My Last Duchess Giovanna Tornabuoni (1488) by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Stylized portraits of Italian Renaissance women in elegant costumes and jewelry were common during the period Browning evokes in “My Last Duchess.” Dramatic Monologue They are like speeches in a play without any surrounding dramatic context. In it, an imaginary context is implied by what the speaker of the monologue says, and by the way he or she says it. The speaker does not address us, as readers, directly. Rather, it is as if we are overhearing the speaker talking to someone else. For Study and Discusion What passages in the Duke’s monologue suggest that he is an intelligent, cultivated Renaissance nobleman? What passages suggest that he is egotistical, tyrannical, and ruthless? According to the Duke, what was his last duchess like? What does he mean when he says, “She had / A heart…too soon made glad” (lines 21-22) For Study and Discussion 3. The critical point in the Duke’s monologue comes in lines 45-46: “This grew; I gave commands