Context
The bulk of his writing before 1846 was for the theatre; thereafter his major poems showed his increasing mastery of this style.
What is dramatic monolgue?
Rain...cheerless grate...dripping cloak...yellow hair...wind and rain....No pain...burning kiss...smiling rosy little head...God has not said a word.
What is Porphyria's Lover?
In "My Last Duchess" the speaker describes he saw her unfaithfulness, frivolity, and stubbornness, and implies he prefers her as a painting rather than as a living woman. He also reveals his belief that women are to be controlled, possessed, and discarded.
What is the objectification of women?
"and there she stands."
What is personification?
She thanked men—good! but ___________
Somehow—I know not how—as if she _________
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s _____.
What is thanked, ranked, gift?
"A time in which events in the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), conveyed connotations of "prudish," "repressed," and "old fashioned and saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture."
What is Victorian England?
Vanity...Old Gandolf...state-chamber...pulpit o' the epistle-side...tabernacle take my rest...white-grape vineyard...brave Frascati villa...Those Pans and Nymphs...pure green as a pistachio nut...sermon on the mount...As still he envied me, so fair she was!
What is The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxid's?
In "The Bishop Orders Hi Tomb at St Praxid's" it suggests people have to learn to live with this concept; no amount of wealth or power can save the Bishop (or anyone else) from their inevitable fate. Through its images of preservation and rot, the poem reminds readers that it is inevitable and that all attempts to escape it are a foolish waste of time.
What is death?
"In three sips the Arian frustrate;"
What is symbolism?
Or, my scrofulous French _________
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and ______ in Belial's gripe;
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth ______,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
What is novel, foot, print?
The Victorians experienced a great age of doubt, the first that called into question institutional Christianity on such a large scale. In literature and the other arts, the Victorians attempted to combine Romantic emphases upon self, emotion, and imagination with Neoclassical ones upon the public role of art and a corollary responsibility of the artist.
What is religion?
In "My Last Duchess" the speaker of the poem, tells us that he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate his marriage to the daughter of another powerful family. He uses a painting of his former wife as a conversation piece, and suggests that she did something of which he didn’t approve.
What is Duke of Ferrara?
The speaker of "Spanish Cloister", takes a violent dislike to one of his religious brothers who he insists, is a lustful, selfish, smug creep who deserves to go straight to Hell. However, the speaker is only telling on himself: in reality, all his accusations reflect his own failings and sins. The speaker's obsessive hatred for Brother Lawrence, suggests, is a projection of his own envy and self-disgust.
What is hypocrisy?
"Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!"
What is allusion?
And then how I shall lie through ___________,
And hear the blessed mutter of the ________,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-_______!
What is centuries, mass, smoke?
The Victorians invented the modern idea of invention -- the notion that one can create solutions to problems, that man can create new means of bettering himself and his environment.
What is science and technology?
The monk considers Lawrence’s supposed attitudes towards the nuns of the nearby convent. When two of them sit outside the convent and tell stories, the speaker says that Brother Lawrence leers at them lustfully would when seeing an attractive woman.
What is Dolores and Sanchicha?
Porphyria's lover wants to fulfill, what he thinks is. Porphyria’s “one wish” to fully surrender herself to him, and to make this loving moment last forever. Told entirely from the vantage point of its twisted speaker, who uses this as a means of control.
What is violence?
"No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain."
What is chiasmus?
When _________ in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the __________,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the ________ warm;
What is glided, storm, cottage?
As far as literature is concerned, a this analysis would attempt to look at the work as a highly mediated "reflection" of the social conditions (which are in turn subject to the particular economic structure) of its particular epoch. Good criticism addresses not only the content of a given text, but also its form.
What is Marxism?
Representations of this concept draws from characteristics of original biblical archetypes of it. Such analogies and representations evoke emotions of hate and deception. Browning effectively draws on this to lament his speaker possessing this.
What is evil?
Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues critique political, religious and personal power of the Victorian epoch. The contemporary evolution from a theocratic to secular society is reflected in his construction of characters who both affirm and challenge the questionable societal values of the time.
What is moral ambiguity?
"Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive."
What is sibilance?
"She had
A _______—how shall I say?— too soon made ______,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went ____________."
What is heart, glad, everywhere?