ENGL 364 Dr. Helen Bittel "My Last Duchess" Study Guide Instructions: Complete any 4 of the following 8 question clusters. Please note that these questions were designed to accommodate a diverse group with different types and levels of prior experience, and not every student will feel well prepared to answer every cluster. Use your best judgment to choose the clusters that seem most likely to enhance your understanding of the poem and to best address your own interests. FYI, the "smaller" questions within each cluster are intended as prompts or suggestions and not as a definitive outline. You are not expected to answer each systematically (or to cover as much ground as the prompts themselves), but only to provide substantive and well-supported responses to the poems, responses that goes beyond "what" and into "why it matters" (i.e. go beyond identifying the rhyme scheme or recurrent imagery and speculate on their significance within the poem). Who/What? 1. Speaker. What does the poem directly reveal about the speaker (i.e. through actions, descriptions, and assertions)? Indirectly (i.e. through language choices, style, assumptions, implied attitudes)? Is he a credible speaker? Should we trust what he tells us? 2. Audience Whom does the speaker (The Duke) seem to be addressing? What is the purpose of their meeting? What is the speaker's attitude toward his listener? Why does the Duke show the listener his painting? 3. Subject. What do we learn about the poem's subject, the Duke's "last Duchess"? What was she like, according to the Duke? Can we trust his assessment? What has happened to her? How? 4. Titles. Why do you think Browning chose the title that he did? Why "last" rather than "late" or "deceased"? Why "Duchess" and not "wife" or "beloved"? How does the title contribute to the "game" Browning is playing with his readers? 5. Genre. What makes this poem a dramatic monologue? (Look it up in the glossary if you need to). And why might this be an effective form for Browning to use in telling this particular story? Put another way, what might this form allow Browning to do or convey that would not be possible in a traditional narrative poem (in which a speaker tells a story directly to the audience, as opposed to telling it to an imagined listener)? 6. Rhyme and Meter. How would you describe the rhyme scheme? The meter? How do both of these contribute to the "feel" of the poem? Do they seem appropriate to the poem's subject and situation? Why or why not? 7. Sound and sense. How does Browning use punctuation, caesurae, and enjambment for effect and emphasis? Are there any places where his use of these devices is particularly striking? How so? Why do you think that Browning so frequently uses unusual syntax in this poem---why does he alter the "usual" or predictable ordering of words in a sentence? Potpourri 8. Is there any else that you think might be important in understanding how the poem works that we have not covered above? What and why? Contact the English Department at: 570-348-6219. E-mail: English@marywood.edu.

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Last update August 19, 2004
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