John Browning

people first think of Shakespeare and perhaps Milton as well. A significant writer that is sometimes not always remembered in the spotlight is Robert Browning. Browning in irrefutably the best there ever was at writing and manipulating dramatic monologues. In fact, dramatic monologues can’t even really be brought up or studied without the mention of Browning. Two of Browning's most famous dramatic monologues are My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover. On the surface these two texts may seem very…

The poetry of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Wroth and Katherine Philips unarguably has similarities in style and theme. All three writers composed poems about love and relationships; and emotion is deeply expressed through their verses. Each author allowed their unique experiences in love and loss to guide their capable pen resulting in a poignant understanding for the reader. Queen Elizabeth, Wroth and Philips express a sense of jaded love in their poetry and make great use of figurative language…

Police Battalion 101 can be found very early in Ordinary Men. According to author Christopher R. Browning, "They were middle-aged family men of working- and lower middle class background from the city of Hamburg” (1). They were often “considered too old to be of use to the German army” and “Most were raw recruits with no previous experience in German occupied territory” (1). According to author Browning these men were quite different than those who truly believed in the Nazi Agenda such as the…

An In-Depth Look at My Last Duchess In the poem “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, the main character, the Count speaks about his deceased wife and a painting of her to a mysterious listener at his private party. The Duchess’s story revolves around the internal conflicts between her and the Count. The main threads include the jealousy and self-importance of the Count, as well as the compassion of the Duchess. He subtly insinuates to the party-goer that his wife’s early death was caused by…

In the poems, Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy and Let me describe for you her eyes by Glenn Colquhoun, the writers have used many different language techniques to show their thoughts on relationships. In Valentine, Carol Ann Duffy uses metaphors and personification to communicate her ideas about love. She thinks that love isn’t always good and joyful and can be miserable and heart breaking. In Let me describe for you her eyes, Glenn Colquhoun uses metaphors and similes to let the readers know his…

The characters portrayed by Browning in his dramatic monologues are various and often rise from the world of the Italian Renaissance. From the artist Fra Lippo Lippi who has become a monk without his will, to Andrea del Sarto, a great painter who has subordinated his art to the demands of an exploitative wife, Browning manages to reveal the true value of art. The pictures of great artists blended with historical detail are embodied in his poems. Vasari’s Lives of the artistsis the source of the…

Montagu’s relationship to the subsequent formation of Orientalist aesthetics is another relevant area of study. Grundy points to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as a relevant parallel to Montagu’s experience, arguing it as a potential citation on Woolf’s part. More recently, Alison Winch’s article “‘Drinking a Dish of Tea With Sappho’: The Sexual Fantasies of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Byron” discusses Byron’s reported fascination with Montagu; he supposedly occupied her same Venetian house…

and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are two poets from different times, and they present their own views of love. They have written two sonnets to express love, which are 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' and 'How do I love thee?'. Love is demonstrated in many ways in their poems, but the way in how they express love is different from each other. Shakespeare uses imagery of summer to compare it to a woman, who is his lover to demonstrate her beauty. Elizabeth Barrett Browning explores a…

A tattoo is like poetry, because there is always more to the story than what meets the eye! The sonnet “First Poem for You” by Kim Addonizio is a riveting piece of poetry that uses symbolization to help readers understand the narrator’s emotions and feelings towards her partner. Visual and tactile imagery used within this poem help explain the meaning of the poem. The theme is longevity and the true meaning of a relationship. In “First Poem for You,” Addonizio creates a fictional character…

Life is full of love and hate. Love is widely considered the beautiful side of life, while hate is thought of as the ugly side. With this popular view on love, people might not realize the evil it can imbed in those who experience it. Robert Browning’s poems “My Last Duchess” and “Porphyria’s Lover” both depict how the speakers commit terrible acts when their possessive and obsessive love towards their women becomes too strong. The speakers of the poems both kill their lovers as they share a…