Abstract
The quest for identity marks the central movement in Robert Browning's dramatic monologue, "Fra Lippo Lippi." This paper looks at how, during the course of the poem, Lippi depicts his patrons and, particularly the Church, as entities that wish to solidify their respective identities through artistic representation. Conversely, it explains how Lippi utilizes painting to point out his personal distance from the Church and to solidify his own identity as an individual who privileges body over soul.

From the Paper
"What he had thought was free artistic expression was little more than a critical assessment of his surroundings through art. The art itself offered no insights to Lippi's personality or identity; rather it allowed him to avoid self-scrutiny. The Prior's criticism of Lippi's work acts as a catalyst for self-evaluation because it creates and highlights a division between Lippi's social obligations and his belief system. However, Lippi's self-evaluation is as meaningless as his art until he verbalizes it. The form of the dramatic monologue indicates that identity exists and has meaning only insofar as it is a response to social context."

Tags:confession, levinas, literature, truth, victorian

Abstract
This paper discusses the dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess" and the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which both deal with issues of mental ill-health. The paper explains that while the Duke in the poem "My Last Duchess" is prone to bouts of megalomania, the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is beset with depression, post-pregnancy. The paper then looks at how both these texts are self-narrative, thus allowing the reader to explore individual and universal predicaments through the sufferer's psyche. The writer points out that the purposes of the two pieces also vary. Browning's poem is intended to chill the reader and narrate a loosely historical story that ends with the gory implication that the Duke is unchecked and might continue to murder other people. Gilman, on the other hand, wrote her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" to instruct what should not be done in cases of depression, to create awareness of the complexity and seriousness of mental ill health and to disturb the reader out of his/her sphere of comfort and provoke productive thought.

From the Paper
"The story is narrated by a woman who's come for a holiday, with her husband and her infant. She writes how her husband, who is a doctor, refuses to believe what she tells him, regarding her mental ill health. He instead, attributes it to a mild form of 'feminine' hysteria and highly sensitive nerves and brings her on a holiday, hoping that the change of scene will do her good. She is advised not to read or write (two things that she enjoys doing), or take walks in the fresh air for it might tire her. She is forced in a loving way to 'recuperate', cooped up in a room that is given to her. The woman becomes obsessed with the peeling wallpaper in the room, her subtle pleas of someone believing her unhappiness and depression going unheard; she consequently becomes mad at the end of the story."

Tags:depression, self-narrative, megalomania, women, murder

Abstract
This essay describes how Robert Browning in 'My Last Duchess' reveals his theory of art in a more complex manner than the more obvious presentation of Alfred Lord Tennyson as he reveals his poetic pleasures in 'Ulysses.' Both diction and images in both dramatic monologues are closely explored and analyzed.

From the Paper
"In delineating the theory of art of these poets, this paper will concentrate primarily on what one dramatic monologue of each of the two poets, Browning and Tennyson, reveals. Both poets are concerned with bringing the feelings and truths of their experience into the hearts and minds of others. A central difference in their theories of art is that Browning puts a greater burden on the reader, while Tennyson feels it vital to be more obvious in expressing his feelings to others. A basic question to consider as we explore their theories of art is: How and why do we enjoy the poems? Understanding our own responses helps us understand their assumptions about art. The aim of both poets is that we lose ourselves within the poem, forgetting for the moment our real surroundings in favor of total immersion in the poetic situation."

Tags:alfred, brownings, dramatic, duchess, last, lord, monologues, robert, tennyson, ulysses

Abstract
This essay reads Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" from a Freudian and general psychoanalytic perspective, locating signals in the diction and style of the poem to argue for the bipolarity of the narrator's psyche--a quantifiable mental ailment which can account for the monstrosity of the act performed in the poem. Quotations from psychiatric texts provide a scientific context for this reading against which passages from the poem are explicated. Additionally, a brief overview of Freud's theory of "ego" balances further forays into literary psychoanalysis.

From the Paper
"In his dramatic monologue "Porphyria's Lover," Robert Browning depicts the murder of a woman, Porphyria, by her lover, the poem's narrator. The first person narration style employed in this work offers a deep insight into the mental processes that guide the narrator's behavior and eventually convince him to commit such a heinous act. These insights, when analyzed from the perspective of modern behavioral sciences such as psychology and Freudian theory, reveal a variety of symptoms that coalesce to depict Porphyria's lover as both a manic depressive and a slave to his baser impulses. Browning's narrator, therefore, functions within a state of mental imbalance that is reflected both in his actions and in the narration itself."

Tags:agricola, barrett, bipolar, ego, id, insanity, johannes

From the Paper
"BROWNING?S MY LAST DUCHESS
Recognized by scholars as one of the great dramatic monologues in all literature, Browning's My Last Duchess is both a marvel of condensed emotion and a penetrating insight into the nature of self-absorption and jealousy. The narrative, ostensibly a description of a portrait, is actually a devastating portrait of the one describing it. Browning uses ambiguity, shifts in mood and symbolism to give the reader a glimpse at a chilling personality. Above all other elements of the poem, the characterization stands out as a testimony to Browning's formidable poetic capacities. Through the character of the Duke, Browning explores the nature of good and evil, of innocence abused. The poem is "a study in cold, systematic torture of a warm human soul by an icy-hearted tyrant" (Phelps 172)."

From the Paper
"Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842) is a dramatic monologue in which the character of the speaker, a Duke showing a painting of his wife, is gradually revealed. As the Duke speaks of the woman in the painting the reader's initial interest turns to apprehension.This feeling is heightened and then justified as he is shown to be responsible for her death. But the reader, now stunned by the Duke's blandly terrible nature, has also wondered all along what the point might be in talking about these matters. This becomes clear, however, when it is revealed that he has an actual auditor in the poem -- and the auditor's identity greatly increases the horror of the poem. All the accumulated inferences the reader has drawn from the Duke's increasingly bizarre speech have indicated that the woman is, indeed, dead -- as his first words seemed to indicate but never..."

Abstract
The paper closely examines the language and tone of Othello's monologue in order to demonstrate how this speech conveys his inner conflict. The paper identifies and explains Shakespeare's use of anaphora, personification, images and tragic tone. In this way, the paper provides insight into Othello's dramatic soliloquy before he finally chooses to kill his wife, Desdemona.

From the Paper
"The tragic play by William Shakespeare, "Othello", depicts the consequences of villainy that result in a murder committed out of jealousy. While the main character, Othello, tries to justify his horrific act with declaring it a sacrifice, the reader embarks on a journey into the inner thoughts of Othello to discover his real motives of killing his wife, Desdemona. By having a closer look at Othello's monologue next to his wife's bed several minutes prior to her death in Act V, scene II, lines 1-24, the reader gains an insight into Othello's train of thoughts. Also, his inner conflict is demonstrated which consists of his struggle whether to kill the woman that he loves and thus, save his reputation, or to lose the esteem of everyone around him. Shakespeare represents, in a manner fraught with figurative language - such as anaphora, personification and images etc. - as well as a tragic tone, the tragedy of a man who has been depicted in the first two acts as a noble, black African and who now shows, through disclosure of his inner dilemma, that he still embodies a barbaric savage beneath his Christian and reserved surface."

Tags:Desdemona, reputation, anaphora, personification, images, tone

Abstract
This paper presents the opening monologue of Shakespeare's "Richard III" as an example of the title character's use of his manipulative charisma. The paper analyzes the motivations for these behaviors of Iago and Richard III. The paper concludes that determining who is most evil among Shakespeare's most ruthless villains rests on the lengths to which they pursue their malevolent machinations, their motivations and their prey, especially one's own family.

From the Paper
"For starters, he admits that his main impetus for wreaking this havoc upon the world of the play rests with the fact that he is idle and is physically unattractive, deformed and therefore seemingly incapable of pursuing romance. Second, and perhaps more telling, is the fact that the first victim of his sinister plot centers on his very own brother. In comparison to another Shakespearean villain such as Iago of Othello infamy, it seems as though Richard's designs to have his own kin murdered is even more malicious. At least Iago's plan revolved around the destruction of an unrelated rival!"

Tags:archetypes, malevolent, romance, power, efficient

Abstract
According to the critic Robert Langbaum, Wordsworth inspired modern poets to found the dramatic monologue school in poems like Browning's "Portrait of a Lady" and Elliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. But Browning and Elliot, the founders of the dramatic monologue, reacted against the lyricism of Wordsworth to create a poetry of sympathy for the self as opposed to ballads about nature. Therefore, a detailed analysis of Wordsworth's poem 'Nutting' must delve into the details of his poetic philosophy as much as his word-by-word sense of diction. The..."

From the Paper
"According to the critic Robert Langbaum, Wordsworth inspired modern poets to found the dramatic monologue school in poems like Browning's 'Portrait of a Lady' and Elliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." But Browning and Elliot, the founders of the dramatic monologue reacted against the lyricism of Wordsworth to create a poetry of sympathy for the self as opposed to ballads about nature. Therefore, a detailed analysis of Wordsworth's poem 'Nutting' must delve into the details of his poetic philosophy as much as his word-by-word sense of diction. The..."

Tags:metaphor, imagery, dramatic monologue, lyric, ballad, diction, consonance

Abstract
This paper explains that Robert Browning's peerless reputation among Victorian poets is linked primarily to four volumes of poetry he published over a period of twenty years during the mid-19th century. The author points out that Browning's most famous poetic form of choice is the dramatic monologue, which is a poem that is written in the voice of another person, as exemplified in poems such as "My Last Duchess" . The paper relates that Browning's poems are portraits of individuals, rather than searching self-explorations; however, these portraits tackle critical issues, which concerned the poet, such as political corruption, religious intolerance and outmoded conceptions about women.

From the Paper
"Interestingly enough, although "the central problem in Browning's love poetry is invariably one of communication between the sexes", Browning's own marriage to a fellow poet was quite happy. He married the (at the time) more famous Elizabeth Barrett Browning, after admiring her poetry, and encouraging her to elope from what was an oppressive relationship with a domineering father. The two of them escaped to Italy, making the words of one of Browning's few lyrics, "Home," written in the voice of an evident expatriate, ironic and poignant."

Tags:dramatic-monologue, duchess, portugues, porphyria, portraits