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Essay on my last duchess by robert browning
Essay on my last duchess by robert browning
Critical analysis of poetry
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I read a critical article on Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. I confess it was harder to find something in the NCLC’s than I would’ve thought. There was a considerable accumulation of critiques on Browning’s work, but very little on “My Last Duchess”.
The article I found concentrated mostly on the Duke in the poem, and our reactions to him, stating that “[t]he utter outrageousness of the Duke’s behavior makes condemnation the least interesting response…” The title of the article was “Sympathy versus Judgment”. Some of its points are that the Duke controls the entire poem, that it being a monologue was significant, and that he is almost easy to sympathize with and like. The article discusses Ferarra’s nature and his self-involvement which allows the goodness of the Duchess to “shine through the Duke’s utterance.”
It goes on to speak about sympathy in general and how Browning “delighted in making a case for the apparently immoral position”, how he found dramatic monologues the best form to do so, and how he went about it. It keeps going for a couple more pages on things which I will not go into because they have little relevance to any interpretation of “My Last Duchess”.
The article as it pertained to my poem was fine; I wish I could have found one which went into more depth as opposed to just discussing immoral characters and our empathy for them. I didn’t particularly care for the lawyerly torrent of words that were used, either. I am not ignorant and appreciate the need for words of longer than two syllables when discussing literature (or anything more serious than an episode of “Friends”, in fact), but I found it more difficult than usual to get through this article. I found it unconscionably wordy and it felt at times as though he was just stringing fancy words together because they looked all important lined up. However, that’s just my opinion.
I was gratified to see that this critic agreed with my interpretation of the Duchess’s demise, viz., the Duke had her murdered. The theory advanced by my brilliant and magnificent Professor had been that the Duke gave her so many orders and restrictions that she pined away. I had been looking at his famous line “And I choose/never to stoop.” He married her for her beauty but would never lower himself to tell her when she angered him.
Harte showed Duchess’s emotional side of her. Her “...pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears...” (Harte, 2) shows the Duchess as emotional, a drama queen, spontaneous and impulsive. This was before she changed, though. “The Duchess, previously a selfish and solitary character, does all she can to comfort and console the fearful Piney.” (Moss and Wilson, 4) Duchess's character reveals that people can switch their habits no matter what the circumstances
Short-term deterrence works in the here and now, moments such as a murderer just had the death sentence carried out deterring that criminal from acting again and spreading a fresh fear through other criminal minds of the risk that is in play with committing certain criminal acts against society. The short-term deterrence acts more like a word of caution, causing offenders and citizens alike to think or re-evaluate before doing due to the fear of death. Long-term deterrence, also known as general prevention, is more of a concept that must be true in order for the concept of deterrence to work within individuals and work in society and criminals alike. That concept is “that the existence of the death penalty for a crime has a ‘moralizing’ influence on people’s perceptions of the gravity of the crime,
Raymond T. Bye describes the basis for the theory of deterrence in the idea that the privilege to live and therefore an individual’s life is the most sacred and only thing any human really owns. Because of this, threatening an individual with the consequence of death will cause them to decide not to engage in the criminal activity. There is a spectrum of consequences that individuals mentally process for...
3, para. 3). Criminal propensity theories lean towards the idea that those who are more criminally prone care less about deterrence because of their risk-taking nature; which is not to say sanctions are irrelevant to criminal prone, just that the more criminally prone a person is, the less sanctions and deterrence matter (Wright, Caspi, Moffit, & Paternoster, 2004, p. 3, para. 4-5). A third theoretical view has the idea that more criminally prone individuals react to deterrence than law abiding, morally sound individuals because the latter do not consider the calculated costs of crime, but rather follow the law regardless (Wright, Caspi, Moffit, & Paternoster, 2004, p. 4, para. 6). This theory lends itself to more of a stalemate, as those prone to follow the law cannot be further deterred from breaking the
It is a vital role of a dentist to prevent the dental problems in order to decrease the number of oral disease.
There is an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of the deterrence doctrine. The deterrence doctrine is dated back to its origins in the 18th century, known to be the Age of Enlightenment. During the 1700s to 1800s, the Classical School of Criminology became the focal point as it commenced to force attention on the “cruel” justice system. The two most influential scholars who have elaborated along the idea of deterrence are Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. Beccaria, known as the father of classical criminology, believed that people are “being motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and trying to avoid being in pain” (Owen et al., 2012, p. 132). The classical criminology is primarily founded on the notion of liberal volition. That is to say that
An example might be people use a river to fish, swim, get water, bath, and could be used for in a sport. People change their environment to get water, like in the desert people do not have very much water so they have to use a screen to catch fog at night to have water for the next day. People use their environment by playing volleyball in the sand, or use the ocean for sailing, and even swimming. People can use their environment in a good or a bad way. In your own environment you use it in a certain way everyday. I use the river for fishing, i use the water in pipes to take showers and use drinking water and to boil water. People throw trash in rivers and in the environment and cause pollution and hurts their own environment. People just hurt themselves in so many ways, they just make their own lives harder. Geography is a big part of life, you study other ethnicities, environments, movement, locations, places, and
“The Widow at Windsor” is quick paced with a rhyming technique that deceives the reader into thinking the topic will be light when in reality the poem is emotionally intense and reveals a difficult lifestyle. Sir George MacMunn refers to Kipling’s style, in his book Rudyard Kipling: Craftsman, as being refreshing yet frequently under scrutiny by the critics of Kipling’s day. Undoubtedly, it is this style that catches the eye of the modern reader.
Throughout "My Last Duchess," Browning uses diction to further increase the haunting effect of his dramatic monologue. His precise and scattered word choice is meant to make the reader recognize the underlying haughtiness in his speech to the Count's emissary. The Duke refers to his former wife's portraits "depth" and "passion" in order to place a cloudiness over the realism of the painting. This, along with the "faint" and "half-flush" appearance that "dies along her throat," brings about an overcast appearance to the poem. The Duke's "trifling" lack of "countenance" is evident in his jealousy of
In ‘My Last Duchess,’ the speaker is conveyed as being controlling, arrogant, malicious, and capricious. The Duke shows signs of jealousy and over-protection towards his first wife. On the other hand, the narrator in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ is portrayed as who has lost touch with reality, someone clearly insane. There a few hints that this character may be lonely and withdrawn. After Porphyria enters the room he is in, the tension immediately drops and the mood warms.
...own heaven upon me then may feed in quiet." (IV ii 208-215) In this her final address, the Duchess reinforces herself as the opposite of Antonio, who wavers and makes several missteps throughout the play. By contrasting these two honest and good hearted lovers only brings further confirmation even honest male characters have faults and weaknesses that lead to the further empowerment of the female character.
There are several aspects within deterrence that are important to understand when discussing the theories of deterrence and labeling. According to the deterrence theory, there are two different classifications of deterrence—specific and general. First, specific deterrence is defined as apprehending an offender and punishing him or her which will refrain them from repeating crimes if they are caught and punished by the criminal justice system (Akers and Sellers, 16). Secondly, general deterrence is defined as the states way of punishing society for a crime that they have not committed, while using a certain group of people who have committed that crime. By doing so, those who are in charge of punishment, inflict fear on members
To fully understand the scope and nature of the problems related to deterrence, one must understand a few facts about deterrence itself. Many people often confuse deterrence with retribution or punishment, but that it is not. Instead of serving your “debt to society” for a crime you committed, under the principal of deterrence you are serving your punishment to keep you and your neighbors from doing the same crime. Operating according to the deterrence model necessitates two principal assumptions: that imposing a stiff penalty will dissuade someone from committing crimes in the future and secondly, that the fear of this punishment will prevent future crimes perpetrated by others. (Wright, 2010) One very important idea here is that it is a “stiff” penalty, a penalty that others won’t forget.
The Duke of Ferrara was made jealous by everything the duchess did, no matter how unimportant it was. He was especially jealous of Fra Pandolf, the man who painted the duchess in the poem. A woman should be pleased only by her husband, as was not the case with the duchess and Fra Pandolf. She was “too easily impressed'; by the painter (line 23). Fra Pandolf was not the only man that made the duke jealous. Everyone who passed the duchess received “much the same smile'; as the duke (line 44). The duke expected to be the only man to receive a smile from his wife.
In "My Last Duchess", by Robert Browning, the character of Duke is portrayed as having controlling, jealous, and arrogant traits. These traits are not all mentioned verbally, but mainly through his actions. In the beginning of the poem the painting of the Dukes wife is introduced to us: "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,/ looking as of she were still alive" (1-2). These lines leave us with the suspicion that the Duchess is no longer alive, but at this point were are not totally sure. In this essay I will discuss the Dukes controlling, jealous and arrogant traits he possesses through out the poem.