Choose three poems from the pre-1914 section of your anthology which present different views of love. Compare the poems considering carefully the language the poets have decided to use and its effects on the reader.

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Choose three poems from the pre-1914 section of your anthology which present different views of love. Compare the poems considering carefully the language the poets have decided to use and its effects on the reader.

        I have chosen two poems by Robert Browning, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess,’ and one by the earlier poet Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ In this essay I plan to compare the contrasting approaches to love in these three poems, and how the poets achieve their aims through language. This can be done using poetic devices such as enjambment, rhyme scheme and meter and language including diction, metaphors and similes.

        ‘My last Duchess’ is a dramatic monologue. This means that only one person is talking and therefore only his point of view is shown. This point of view shows his personality and how he feels towards his wife. The poem begins,

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call.

That piece a wonder, now: Frá Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.”

This gives the reader the impression that the man does not care about his wife, but more about the value of the painting and how a famous painter spent lots of time painting it. Straight away the reader can see that this man is cold and not passionate towards his deceased wife.

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“Two easily impressed: she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.”

Here the man believes that his wife was too easily impressed and affectionate towards others and other things. He wants his wife to adore him and no other, and therefore is a selfish man. This also includes enjambment which makes the dramatic monologue seem more like a speech which he is dictating and shows him as very egotistical and self absorbed. The speech becomes very disturbing when he says:

“Then all smiles stopped together.”

Here he is morbid and cold hearted as ...

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