Poetry Analysis Essay

Irony is a crucial literary device in the dramatic monologue My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. Actually, one of the most important things that feces be said just about Robert Browning is that he is a perfect ironist, and that irony is an important circumstances of My Last Duchess. In, My Last Duchess, the Duke is projecting one image of himself, yet, through the ironic structure of the poem and the hold it imposes, his image is revealed to indorsers in a way that contradicts the Dukes self-image. The Duke proposes an image of himself as gorgeous, wise, with nice attitudes and manners, an expert, a complete man. However, readers of the poem deduce a jealous or crazy psychopath, eaten out with insecurity.In the poem the ecstasy and sophistication of the Dukes monolog draw the reader sympathetically into his world. Readers become actively involved in the egoism, haughtiness, and almsgiving of a proud Renaissance Duke. However, the irony of the poem every minute undermines this way of regarding situation, and awakens readers critical abilities. eyepatch the Duke describes how he murdered his first duchess quietly because she failed to focus her whole existence on him, readers see his un primerableness dapple he describes his generosity to his first wife, readers see his selfish desire to control another person deep down the confines of his own pleasures.According to the Duke his first wife was too easily made happy, too freewill, missing in aristocratic haughtiness or composureWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that wipe out sex of joy. She hadA heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,Too easily move she liked whateerShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.She enjoyed many aspects of her life at court, and (as the Duke asserts) failed absolutely to focus her attention on him sufficiently. The Duke stresses that she should have been focused on him, and on the importance of his aristocratic descent his nine-hundred-year s-old name. Still, however much the Duke knows about himself, the reader who listens to him knows more, and the dramatic ironythe difference between the characters and the readers experienceruns against him and in readers favor. It is the reader who sees how horrible is his haughtiness and brutality. The Duke does not see this himself. He sees himself as a generous and noble expert of art. As the reader decodes the irony, the Duke appears as a madman who reduces volume to objects.When the wife of the Duke failed to be a good wife, the Duke did not let himself go below his dignity to reason with her, or explain how her behavior irritated him. He simply had her calmly executed, and began to think about a second marriage. After he has euphemistically told the envoy how he gave commands, i.e. gave orders for her murder, he points to the portrait and says There she stands, As if alive. The irony is unexpected and horrible.Brownings poetic monologue is full of irony. The Duke discloses far more than he really says about himself. Throughout the whole monologue, the Duke speaks in a calm, firm, ironical tone. The line The depth and lovingness of its earnest glance is spoken in intense irony. Only once or twice the reader sees the teeth of this monster flash, showing his horrible heart.When he speaks of the officious fool who brought the cherries, and when he states all smiles stop together then the envoy looks at him with fear in his eyes, that the Dukes face promptly resumes its mask of stone. Brownings character in the poem is projecting one image of himself, but the ironic structure of the poem reveals to readers completely opposite image.Works CitedBrowning, Robert. The Poems. Ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins. New oasis Yale UP, 1981.