Browning

perspectives on the idea of love. Some individuals may carry an attitude of hopefulness and faith in love; however, others may be uncertain of his or her beloved which could lead to jealousy. In the poems “XLIII,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “My Last Duchess,” by Robert Browning, the idea of love exists but the viewpoints are in contrast with each other. The speaker in the poem “XLIII” holds the attitude of positivity and deep affection, while the speaker in “My Last Duchess” carries the…

Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti illustrate women’s oppression by men in Victorian society within their poems, “My Last Duchess” and “Goblin Market.” The Duchess, Laura, and Lizzie all act against the expectations set for them with varying ramifications. The poets use different narrative perspectives and careful word choice in order to depict the subjugation of these women, their rebellion against it, and the punishment they face for rebelling, calling public attention to the mistreatment…

Context plays a significant role in portraying values of the composer triggered by time and place. ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ (1845) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a reflection of her personal experiences in the context of the Victorian era’s gender issues and female expectation in a Petrarchan form. Similarly F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (1926) centres of the failure and tragedy of the American dream in the Roaring 20's. Both texts explore the positive and negative effects of…

When we think of Genocide what do we think of? Vicious and remorseless killers, A brutal Sadist, armies wiping out anyone in their path, or an average citizen just following orders? It is this final option that Browning chooses to focus on for this book and the choices made by these Ordinary men. The book begins by giving the reader statistics of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland, then going on to describe how the genocide began in the city of Bialystok and other close towns as they escalated from…

“Haunted Courthouses” By: John G. Browning With the Halloween season approaching, perhaps we should add “courthouse” to the pantheon of traditional scary places. No, not because courthouses can induce bad memories for those who didn’t prevail in their quest for justice. I mean because there are some courthouses that are genuinely scary places – some might even say “haunted.” In a scene straight out of a horror movie, in January 2015 a trial at the Sevier County Courthouse in De Queen,…

Strong, determined yet graceful and refined, the transcendent power of women is an attribute that has been misconstrued throughout centuries. Women have the ability to raise and educate generations all the while possessing a fierceness that allows them to accomplish anything they desire. In modern society, the power of women is limitless. They are free to follow their individual paths and choose their own fate. Although modern women have the opportunity to attain their goals, a woman…

Elizabeth Barrett Browning “To George Sand: A Desire” This poem speaks against a society that decided the customary roles for women by dominion men; case in point- line 3 “moaning defiance”. This poem illustrated how women follow their dreams without embarrassment. It opens with an authoritative tribute to sand and looks into the sexual characteristics with this verse, “Thou large-brained woman and large hearted man”. The next few lines of the poem explored the roles of both sexes by…

In “A Poison Tree” by William Blake and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe have the same concept in the matter of characters and conflicts. In the poem by Blake, the speaker of the poem is angry with its “Foe” but the foe doesn’t know of the feelings of the speaker. In the short story by Poe the main character Montresor was furious with Fortunato, the other main character, for reasons that Fortunato is not aware of and same with the reader. The poem and short story are similar because…

Chaucer wrote of The Book Duchess as an eulogy for Blanche of Lancaster, the wife of his friend, patron and employer John of Gaunt. The poem is organized as a dream vision and as such is build in circles that are closed and interlinked with around each other. At the core of the poem is the Man in Black’s lament for his queen and on the most outer circle is the poet, tormented by a personal loss, that remains unexplained within the text. While the Knight is entirely overcome with his grief and…

Myrna Pena-Reyes’ “Breaking Through” and William Carlos William’s “This is Just to Say” expresses the relationship of the persona with another person through the use of different figurative devices. In “Breaking Through”, we see the persona as the daughter and the “you” in the poem as her father. Meanwhile, in the poem “This is Just to Say”, the persona of the poem is the husband, while the “you” in the poem refers to his wife. These two poems present a similar conflict – the persona is…