My Last Duchess Notes
MY LAST DUCHESS:
Narrative perspective/voices: first person narrator, aristocrat, superior and detached, clear sense of the addressee who the duke thinks is inferior, the Duke talks about the duchess but never quotes her words, the duke a performer who mimics the voices of others, chilling sinister tone, etc.
Setting: the duke of Ferrara’s palace, upstairs in the gallery, 16th century setting, etc.
Dramatic monologue, written in iambic pentameters, reads like blank verse in a drama/contains 3 formal elements: an occasion, a speaker, a hearer/ words are heard and intended to be heard by an implied auditor (the count’s envoy)/ has the appearance of being excerpted from the body of a verse drama/ use of implicit stage directions (Will’t please you sit and look at her? and Will’t please you rise?), etc.
Begins with the Duke pointing out the Duchess’s portrait; unclear at first who is being addressed/ focus on the relationship between the Duke and his Duchess/ dramatic climax of the possible murder of his wife which is underplayed/ use of dramatic surprise/ finally the Duke disappears from view as he descends the staircase/ linear chronology, but with use of flashback, use of heroic couplets, lines not end - stopped – enjambment cuts across
The rhyming lines creating a powerful force behind the Duke’s revelations, etc.
Use of speech, repetition (Fra Pandolf’s name), use of the word ‘stoop’, the title, the use of possessive pronouns, references to power, lexical fields of business, art/ natural imagery, contrast, colloquial speech, discourse markers, use of names, use of dramatic pauses, use of the imperative, etc.
Narrative perspective/voices: first person narrator, aristocrat, superior and detached, clear sense of the addressee who the duke thinks is inferior, the Duke talks about the duchess but never quotes her words, the duke a performer who mimics the voices of others, chilling sinister tone, etc.
Setting: the duke of Ferrara’s palace, upstairs in the gallery, 16th century setting, etc.
Dramatic monologue, written in iambic pentameters, reads like blank verse in a drama/contains 3 formal elements: an occasion, a speaker, a hearer/ words are heard and intended to be heard by an implied auditor (the count’s envoy)/ has the appearance of being excerpted from the body of a verse drama/ use of implicit stage directions (Will’t please you sit and look at her? and Will’t please you rise?), etc.
Begins with the Duke pointing out the Duchess’s portrait; unclear at first who is being addressed/ focus on the relationship between the Duke and his Duchess/ dramatic climax of the possible murder of his wife which is underplayed/ use of dramatic surprise/ finally the Duke disappears from view as he descends the staircase/ linear chronology, but with use of flashback, use of heroic couplets, lines not end - stopped – enjambment cuts across
The rhyming lines creating a powerful force behind the Duke’s revelations, etc.
Use of speech, repetition (Fra Pandolf’s name), use of the word ‘stoop’, the title, the use of possessive pronouns, references to power, lexical fields of business, art/ natural imagery, contrast, colloquial speech, discourse markers, use of names, use of dramatic pauses, use of the imperative, etc.