blog




  • Essay / Exploring love and its corruption: My Last Duchess, Andrea Del Sarto and Two in The Campagna

    In My Last Duchess and Andrea del Sarto, Robert Browning explores notions of love and its ability to corrupt character and the potential of an individual. through its signature diegetic form; the dramatic monologue. Although the form of both of these poems is based on an implied audience, the primary agent and primary subject is the narrator, rather than the subjects he speaks about. The form itself requires the reader to complete the dramatic scene from within, drawing on inference and imagination, using the clues provided by Browning's narrators regarding their obsessions and preoccupations. In a different way, Two in the Campagna varies in its metrical poetic structure and consists primarily of iambics, but as this consistency disintegrates, a parallel symbolism is created, as the narrator's ideas and love, as well as the language required to express them, are each identified as unobtainable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayVaried perceptions and attitudes regarding the nature of loyalty and jealousy within relationship dynamics are explored in My Last Duchess and Andrea Del Sarto. The overwhelming jealousy and possessive nature of the narrator (the Duke) in My Last Duchess is outlined in the title of the poem, with the possessive pronoun "my" used by Browning to reveal the Duke's disposition and respect for the Duchess as being a object under his control. In contrast, Andrea Del Sarto's eponymous narrator, while aware that his wife is having an adulterous relationship with "Cousin", chooses to return to the comfort of his relationship, rather than opposing domination and to control in marital dynamics. . The pleading tone of “Do you have to go?” " is used by Browning in order to highlight the narrator's desperation to maintain the status quo, but his ultimate inability to impose the limits he desires on his partner, as evidenced by the use of a question rather than an imposing imperative form. While the disloyalty of Andrea Del Sarto's partner is objectively present, the Duke of My Last Duchess notes the same trait in the Duchess, but with a clear absence of empirical proof. The adverb "perhaps" presupposes the imaginative nature of the evidence for the Duchess's infidelity, thereby corrupting the credibility of the Duke's suggestions that "the spot of joy [on] the Duchess's cheek" was caused by other men. Faced with his perceived adultery, the Duke acts violently, ordering the Duchess's execution, asserting his ultimate control over the Duchess, literally objectifying her and constraining her to the confines of a painting. Conversely, Andrea Del Sarto's narrator, despite his hesitations, uses his one imperative from the poem "Go, my Love" in a way that does not assert control over his relationship, but rather allows him to continue to feel behave in the same way as before. This command is used by Browning to emphasize that the control exercised by the narrator is quite easy and that, in his own relationship dynamic, the power remains in the hands of his partner. Much like in Andrea Del Sarto, the narrator of Two in the Campagna struggles to demonstrate control over both love and his ideas, emphasizing their ephemeral nature. In order to experience a space-time paradigm in which love can be tamed and controlled, the narrator invites his listener to imagine the open fields of "Champaign", being the countryside surrounding Rome. Symbolically, this territory is used by Browning to represent a liminal zone in which.