The Poem My Last Duchess - Essay Example

Literary Questions The poem “My Last Duchess” is slackly primed on historical activities that involve Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara of the sixteenth century. The Duke is the persona of the poem, and illustrates to us that he is hosting an ambassador who has come to mediate his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy magnate. As the Duke takes the emissary through the palace, he halts to a stop and faces up front the portrait of the deceased Duchess, inexorably a youthful and lovely lady. This picture of the late Duchess takes the Duke aback, who then starts to recall about the portrait meeting, subsequently about the Duchess herself. The Duchess Musings lead to criticism on her shameful actions. Ideally, the Duke asserts that she infatuated with everyone and rarely appreciated him for who he was. As the monologue goes on, it shows the reader that the Duke himself was responsible for the Duchess death. Furthermore, as both the Duke and the Ambassador saunter ahead and leave the portrait behind, the Duke shows the ambassador other noticeable artworks in his anthology. There are different techniques that the poet has used in “My Last Duchess.” He uses rhyming which is intoned with heavy pentameter. Subsequently, by using a critical eye, the rhymes have no power of building a sense of conclusion when they come. But the rhymes manage to stay flimsy a mobile force behind the Duke’s compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite the actor. He imitates other person’s voices, builds hypothetical scenarios, and consumes the force of his character to create horrendous information appear sheer colorful. The poet has a way of building a multihued personality and putting him in a graphic historical event. The historical setting of the poem stores a lot more importance. For one thing, the Italian Renaissance contained certain excitements that took over Browning and his generation. Ideally, the Italian Renaissance stood for the pinnacle of the artistic and the human beings as well. These chronological surroundings allows Browning to have the power of analyzing violence, sex, and art which as we read see as complicated and muddling. Furthermore, the luxuriance of the language begrudges the reality that the Duchess was simply punished for her inherent sexuality. The Duke’s rants propose that the Duchess sins occurred only in his imagination. The Duke in Browning creativity sees that every cranny and corner of the street is littered with sin. The frantic urge to carry out this reflects the pains of the Victorian civilization to embrace the behavior of male sexuality. The Victorians are inexorably faced with a mounting multifaceted and unspecified modern world. Ideally, this whim comes logically. To direct it may seem farfetched. Come to think of it, the Renaissance was a period where decently debauched men such like Duke had a lot of power. This particular poem is interesting and intellectually slots in the reader on an emotional level. Either way, since we listen and hear Duke’s Musings, the poem manages to compel us to weave the whole story ourselves. Browning intelligently manages to put the reader in a corner inside the poem with a view to making him and/or her understand it. Granted this adds amusement of poring over his work. However, I feel that this poem leans towards genuflecting the Duke’s murder of the Duchess. A & P was a story that was written brilliantly by one of America’s most gifted writers, John Updike. This story was written during the 60’s movement. It was at this time when sexuality and feminism were appearing in the limelight. A & P concentrates on the life of a nineteen-year-old grocery storekeeper. When three girls skulk inside the grocery garbed in bikinis, Sammy directs his attention to them. The store manager comes from out back, and rebukes them vehemently for wearing sleazily. Lengel chases them out of the A& P and tells them to come to back at the store when they are properly dressed. Exasperated by the manager’s action, Sammy resolves to quite because he thinks that the manager embarrassed the girls. A & P demonstrates the capacity of literature to mirror and interpret human behavior and societal institutions by using Sammy. It can be argued Sammy’s experience at the grocery shows a true erotic experience. This sexual experience forces Sammy to strip off his bias predicated on the lack of sexual variation. Sammy, in the same, is clearly captured by his sexuality. Matter of factly, his surveillance that starts the story shows how his sexuality focuses on his bias. The three girls in the swimming suits mirror the difference between youthfulness and adulthood. They are sexual provocative as well as physically attractive. The patterns in and A & P and that of our society shows us to a large extent that both men and women are captured by ideologies of conservative masculinity and femininity. William Butler Yeasts uses mere splendor and musicality in his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. At the beginning, the starting lines grip the reader with their hypnotic and seductive rhythm and meter. The poems pull the listener deeper within with its lullaby tempo and tranquil countrified images of beauty and quiet. This poem is very important in the literary study. This is because the poem denotes Yeasts early romantic poetry. The poem has an irregular assonance which particularly befits the lyrical theme the homesickness for a dearly loved land of tranquil scenery. The format relates to each lyrical and elegiac and repetitive. Alliteration in the poem helps to transcend the moderate cadence. On the same length, assonance stresses the fluid setting and reminiscent segmented language. Striking imagery thrives in this poem. The imagery helps the readers to easily able to foresee the near peace and stillness of a purple twilight a restrained mention of tender restricted movement. The poem requires a sharp critical eye as its sheer complicated to unravel its meaning. Furthermore, the main premise of the poem is that of exile. The poem also passes of off as very solemn, remorseful and resigned by all aspects. The theme can be said to be of agonizing unrequited love. In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, we see Emily is an outsider, who is much less controlling and restrictive to the Jefferson town admission to her true individuality by staying lingering hidden. Ideally, the house that protects Emily from the real world asserts the psyche of the woman who occupies it. To the townspeople Emily remains a weird and muted figure. Moreover, Homer Barron can be categorized alongside Emily. He is mysterious and an outsider, too. Homer is generally the darling of the townspeople; in short he is the entity of attention and admiration. It is via the strange figure of Emily Grierson that William Faulkner coveys the struggle that emanates from trying to uphold ritual in the face of extensive swell, drastic change. William Faulkner brings out Emily as a tradition; and on the whole a blessing. As a living tombstone of the precedent, she stands for the rituals that many people wish to revere. Death hovers over Emily as William Faulkner uses the narrator to declare Emily’s death at the onset of the story via vivid illustration of her life to the weltering tradition in the visage of contemporary changes. One of the themes in the story is watching. Emily is a casualty to extreme, scheming watch of the speaker and inhabitants of Jefferson. In stead of an authentic relationship to Emily, the residents of Jefferson built biased and often subjective explanations of Emily who majority of them hardly know. Ironically, the town’s people grace her funeral under the guise of admiration and respect. Emily’s house has imagery interpretations. Ideally, it is a symbol for a monument, the sole existing mummify of a fading world of Southern upper class. Emily is an outsider, who is much less controlling and restrictive to the Jefferson town admission to her true individuality by staying overtly hidden. Ideally, the house that protects Emily from the real world asserts the psyche of the woman who occupies it. To the townspeople Emily remains a weird and muted figure. Work Cited Leitch, Vincent. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Print. Read More