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English coursework

Compare the ways in which the poets present their stories in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’

Both of the poems I have chosen to compare are written by Robert Browning. In ways these poems are both different and similar to each other. Two of the main similarities are that both of these poems are concentrated around the death of a woman and they’re both dramatic monologues. A dramatic monologue is a poem in which a single speaker who is no the poet utters a poem at a critical moment. However the way in which he presents both stories has quite a few differences.

My Last Duchess first appeared in 1842, consisting of 56 lines, the poem is written in rhyming couplets meaning that the end of every pair of 2 lines rhymes. The rhyming couplet give it a rigid structure but the punctuation makes it quite flexible-iambic pentameter. The basic story in this poem is that the narrator (supposed duke of Ferrara) is giving a guest a tour of his home, when he comes across a picture of his late wife, he says about how she always flirted then explains how he had her killed so that now she would only smile for him. Porphyria’s lover first appeared in 1836, consisting of 60 lines, the poem is written as one big stanza but is sort of split into 5 line rhyming schemes of a-b-a-b-b etc. The basic story in this poem is about a man who killed his love Porphyria so that she could be his forever in this state of eternal love.

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At first glance of the poems, the narrators come across very different to each other. In Porphyria’s Lover the narrator seems to really feel for Porphyria and he is so in love with her which can be proven from line 34-35 ‘Made my heart swell, and still it grew while I debated what to do.’ However the narrator in My Last Duchess appears to be harsher and unsympathetic, and also a little bit jealous of other men because of the way his late wife supposedly acted towards them. This point is backed up by line 22-23 ‘too soon made glad. Too ...

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