GCSE English literature Pre 1914 Comparative poetry coursework assignment

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GCSE English literature Pre 1914 Comparative poetry coursework assignment

Compare and contrast the different ways that “love and loss” are represented in the poems you have selected. You should comment on the ideas that the poets communicate, the way the language has been used and how each poet has used form.

The selection of poems I will be looking at and analysing are all based on “Love and Loss” All these poems are written before 1900, and all focus on four different aspects of love.

The first ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning is about jealous love... The second ‘Villegiature’ by Edith Nesbit is about disappointment in love, thirdly I will be studying ‘A Woman To Her lover’ by Christina Walsh, which is about equality in love. And lastly… ‘A Birthday’ by Christina Rossetti which is about a celebration of love.

        

Each of the poems are very different and individual, no two are alike. Perhaps the one that stands out the most is ‘My Last Duchess’ because it is the only poem that is from a man’s point of view, it is also the only poem that displays loss rather than love.

The poem is a dramatic monologue because only one person is speaking throughout, and it’s dramatic because it gradually reveals the Duke’s most inner thoughts and feelings.

The poem was written in the Renaissance Period, when a lot of fine architecture and art was being produced, which may have been Browning’s inspiration.

The poem is about a Duke who gives the woman he loves his “nine-hundred-year-old-name” or… in other words his hand in marriage. It tells a story of how he has a portrait of her on the wall “That’s my last duchess painted on the wall. Looking as if she was still alive.”

That line is implying that she is no longer alive for some reason causing the reader to pause and wonder how she died. The Duke is telling his story to the envoy of the Count who is downstairs at a party that the Duke is hosting.

        The envoy and the Duke stand and look at the painting, “And seemed as they would ask me, If they durst, how such a glance came there…Sir,’t was not her husbands presence only, called that spot of joy into the Duchess’ cheek…” The envoy asked the Duke why the duchess had such an expression on her face and the duke suggests to the reader that his wife was enjoying the attention of the artist Frá Pandolf who was painting the picture.

He then goes on to imply that the Duchess was easily infatuated by other men,

“She had a heart-how shall I say? -Too soon made glad, too easily impressed; she liked whatever she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” He is telling the reader that she wasn’t very moral and quite unfaithful; he is proposing that the Duchess liked the company of other men, but he implies it quite politely and tactfully. “How shall I say?…”

        The duke then tells the envoy that he gave her everything, a comfortable, picturesque life where she should have felt privileged and happy. However this was not the case as she liked to be spoilt and didn’t treat the Duke with anymore respect or care than she did the other men that she spent time with.

 “Sir,’t was all one! My favour at her breast… The bough of cherries some officious fool broke in the orchard for her… All and each would draw from her alike the approving speech.” He is obviously quite a jealous man, and the fact that she didn’t only have eyes for him, obviously upset him.

         It gives the reader the impression that he couldn’t control his wife and that he was not the one in the wrong, causing the reader to assume it was the Duchess’s entire fault, and because of this the reader takes a slight dislike towards the Duchess.

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        The Duke covers the painting of his wife with a curtain… “None puts by the curtain I have drawn for you, but I.” The Duke is quite a controlling, officious man and it angered him that he was unable to control his wife whilst she was alive, so he covers her painting with a curtain because it is only now that she is dead that he has the authority to control who looks at her. This causes the reader to arouse suspicions as to how the Duchess died.

        The Duke then goes on further to hint to the reader that ...

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