Poetic Genres: Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"

POETIC GENRES
Genres:
 i.e. “kinds”
 Groups of texts defined by sets of conventions (pre-patterns)
 Conventions guide both the writing and reading of texts
 Poems either with fixed/closed or open form
 3 major kinds of poetic genres: lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry
Dramatic Poetry
Dramatic monologue:
 Speaker (who is not the author!) utters a speech that makes up the whole of the
poem
 Addresses other people whose presence can only be determined by what the
speaker says (one sided comunication)
 The speaker’s temperament and character is revealed to the reader (How he says
things to figure out how is he/she  what and how he says)
 Example: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” of 1842:
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”
Ferrara
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. […]
[…]
Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. […]
En la línea 1 explica la situación que vive. Después, le explica a otro hombre la

situación. Why is dead then…está pretendiendo a algunas de las hijas del conde,
que son más jóvenes, para sacarles la pastita.
Narrative Poetry
1. EPIC
Long narrative poem about the deeds of adventurous warriors and heroes in wars and
battles contexts. The hero is the center of the epic. It saves wife/princess from whatever
problem she has. This is written in the shape of an heroic poem. It has no plot but has
story. ¿SOMEONE’S REFLECTION? Complete with “verse form and poetic genres”
Primary epics from oral tradition:
 Gilgamesh (Sumerian epic, c. 3000 BC)

 Iliadand Odyssey(Homer, c. 1000 BC)
 Beowulf(Anglo-Saxon, c. 1000 AD)
Secondary/literary epics:
 Virgil, Aeneid (c. 30-19 BC)

 Esp. popular as of 13th century
 Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene (1589, 1596)
 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667)
Beowulf
 written in Old English by an unknown poet

 only one copy exists
 uses alliterative verse (rather than rhyme)
 story:
o set in Scandinavia
o Beowulf helps the Danish king to defeat a monster called Grendel, and
later also Grendel’s mother
o Beowulf becomes king and rules for 50 years
o Beowulf has to fight a dragon; he defeats the dragon but is fatally
wounded (lesson of modesty)
 Mixture of German and Christian values
2. MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
 Represents courtly and chivalric age, highly developed manners and civility
 The main characters are court members
 Plot: quest by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favour, courtly love,
tournaments fought, dragons and monsters to be slain, courage, honor,
mercifulness, supernatural magic (adventures of the might).
 Can be in verse or prose
 Verse romance: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight(14thcentury)
 Prose romance: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (ca. 1468-1470)
3. BALLAD
From “Sir Patrick Spens”:
The king sits in Dumferling towne,

Drinking the blude-red wine:
“O Whar will I get a guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine?
•Collection of ballads in England esp. in the 18th century, esp. Francis J. Child, English
and Scottish Popular Ballads
(1882-98)
•Literary Ballads esp. during English Romanticism: Wordsworth and Coleridge’s
Lyrical Ballads(1798)n. Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Keats, “La Belle
Dame sans Merci”.
Stanzas not fixed, it does not repeat prescribed patterns. (COMPLETAR CON LA
HOJA VERSE FORM AND POETIC GENRES).
Lyric Poetry
1. ODE
Pindaric Ode: stanzas in sets of three, moving in a dance rhythm to the left, the chorus
chanted the strophe, moving to the right, the antistrophe, then, standing still, the epode.
It is an open form of poetry. The author writes freely and then repeats that pattern.
(COMPLETAR CON LA HOJA VERSE FORM AND POETIC GENRES)
Thomas Gray, “The Progress of Poesy” (1757)
About Horatian Ode: often one stanza form that is repeated (homostrophic).
It can praise a person, the arts of music or poetry, or a time of day, abstract entities
(Wordsworth, “To Duty”)
• Romantic Poets: personal odes of description of an outer scene and the attempt to
solve a personal problem or a general human one Examples:
 Andrew Marvell, “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”
(1650)
 John Keats, “To Autumn” (1820)
2.- LIMERICK
 It has a defined form and specific stress pattern: single, five-line stanza with the
stress pattern 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3
 Light/comic verse
 Earliest printed in the 1820s
 Often concludes with a surprising reversal or revelation of the witty (ingenioso)
point.
Examples: (1st one describes scenario; 2nd one is a parody of a Limerick)
A) There was a young lady of Norway,
Who hung from her toes in a doorway;
She said to her beau:
‘Come over here, Joe,
I think I’ve discovered one more way!’
(Swinburne)
B) There was a young lady of Crewe

Whose limericks stopped at line two.
3. EPIGRAM
S.T. Coleridge:
On a Volunteer Singer
Swans sing before they die—‘twere no bad thing
Should certain people die before they sing!
Dramatic twist (COMPLETAR CON LA HOJA VERSE FORM AND POETIC
GENRES).
4. SONNET
They have a very specific structure: Stanzas. Some Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences:
Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophil and Stella” (c. 1580, publ. 1591)
Edmund Spenser, Amoretti (1595)
William Shakespeare, Sonnets (1590s, publ. 1609)
 1-17 persuasion to marriage and procreation
 18-125the speaker’s devotion to the youth
 126 metaphorical or actual death of the
 “lovely boy” (two lines short; 6 couplets)
 127-154 the dark lady (154 Sonnets: published as Quarto edition by Thomas
Thorpe)
(COMPLETAR CON VERSE FORM AND POETIC GENRES Y POETRY READER
4 THE SONNET)
Edmund Spenser: Sonnet 15

Ye tradefull merchants, that with weary toyle
Do seeke most pretious things to make your gain,
And both the Indias of their treasures spoile,
What needeth you to seeke so farre in vaine?
For loe my love doth in her selfe containe
All this world’s riches that may farre be found.
If saphyres, loe her eyes be saphyres plaine;
If rubies, loe her lips be rubies sound;
If pearls, her teeth be pearls both pure and round;
If yvorie, her forehead yvory weene;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
If silver, her faire hands are silver sheene.
But that which fairest is, but few behold:
Her mind, adornd with vertues manifold.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;-/-/-/-/-/
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;/--/-/-/-/
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;-/-/-/-/-/
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.-/-//---//
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,-/-/-/-/-/
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,-/-/-/-/-/
And in some perfumes is there more delight -/-/-/-/-/
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.-/-/-/-/-/
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know-/-/-/-/-/
That music hath a far more pleasing sound; -/-/-/-/-/
I grant I never saw a goddess go –-/-/-/-/-/
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.-/-/-/-/-/
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare-/-/-/-/-/
As any she belied with false compare. -/-/-/-/-/

Poetic Genres: Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"

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POETIC GENRES

Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”

En la línea 1 explica la situación que vive. Después, le explica a otro hombre la

Primary epics from oral tradition:

 Gilgamesh (Sumerian epic, c. 3000 BC)

 Virgil, Aeneid (c. 30-19 BC)

 written in Old English by an unknown poet

From “Sir Patrick Spens”:

The king sits in Dumferling towne,

B) There was a young lady of Crewe

Edmund Spenser: Sonnet 15

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