Robert Browning - My Last Duchess - Analysis. Poetry Lecture by Dr. Andrew Barker 

INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE. MONDAY. "What, in brief, does the poem My Last Duchess have to say about the power of the Aristocracy in Victorian times?"

Even as someone who has studied this poem before, I find this lecture is fantastic.

Making difficult things seem easy for the learners is a fundamental tenet of teaching and you do that well here. Browning though significantly home-educated was a ferociously intelligent autodidact. All of his poetry is worth study not only for its depth but for his control of sound and form. His wife's poetry too.

the lecturer has very victorian hair indeed

I really enjoyed the lecture. This is probably the best lecture that I have listened to in my life.Thank you.

I looooove this poem. (Since I was 12. I'm 68 now). ( he) " gave commands. Then smiles stopped altogether. There she stands" Thanx for your lovely talk. BTW my other favorite RB poem is " The Laboratory " In case you're thinking of doing another RB poem.

For the first time last night I looked up RU-vid videos about poetry, and came across yours. I enjoyed it immensely. Seven other poetry videos I turned off after less than 5 minutes, before I stumbled on yours. You restore my faith in English Literature being taught in an academic way, without deconstructionism, or the idea that great poets had/have no idea what they are saying, but it's the Audience that brings meaning to a poem, which is bunk. I have posted before the fact you already know that Elizabeth Barrett Browning got all the acclaim when the couple was alive, but the 20th Century "rediscovered" her husband, Robert Browning, now widely thought the superior poet. What you don't know is my final statement on my posting, saying I did not care much for Elizabeth Barrett Browning- unless she was being quoted by Blanche DuBois.

On how the Duchess actually died. (To correct a slight omission from the lecture) I’ve often thought that there’s a fun level of Sherlock Holmes style deduction we can do on the Duchess’s death here. “There she stands as if alive.” So we know she is now dead. The implication that the Duke has had her killed is as close to absolute as can be made without him actually saying he has killed her, which the Duke himself cannot do. Of course we do not know for sure, specifically, how he has had her killed, but if he has ordered someone to, say, cut her head off straight away or if he has ordered her incarcerated in a dungeon until she died, really what’s the difference? He has still ordered her death. A comment made below here, concerning which mode of killing her would be most likely, that being that he merely had her removed from his home and locked up in a villa or tower where she died of disease or privation, is fair enough, I think. True enough, perhaps this is, “a much more likely thing for a wealthy and evil man of his station to have done to an unwanted wife in the time in which the narrator lived.” But is it more likely for this specific individual in this poem to have done that? We can but speculate. I would deduce that it would be more in keeping with the Duke’s character for her to have been thrown off the castle ramparts or something like that because, for me that would be in tune with the dismissive and absolute nature of the man giving us the information about her. I would predict her death to be caused by something he doesn’t have to know about and doesn’t have to bother himself with. Locked away until she died works too, of course but, and here's my Sherlock Holmesian 'evidence', I can’t see him bothering to wait that long for her to die. Which doesn’t mean someone else might not see her death coming about that way. Speculation on specifically how he had her killed may be rather macabre fun, but I don’t think there’s really enough concrete evidence in the poem for me to be able to know the actual mode of execution, but something swift is what I’d expect of him. In fact, probably because I see “all smiles stopped together” as being something absolute and happening in one moment, if I were looking at this like Sherlock Holmes I’d predict a strangling. Something also perhaps worth mentioning here is the form imitating content possibility in the direct chop between “I gave commands then all smiles stopped together” and, “There she stands as if alive.” I freely admit to being a big fan of the way that something being written imitates and enhances what is being written about . . . but does not the speed between the two statements indicate that the murder was performed swiftly after the instructions were issued? The swift and uncaring movement between the two ideas shows a mind that acts swiftly and uncaringly, making it more likely that she had been killed in a swift and caring way. "I game commands," (quickly), "Then all smiles stopped together, (quickly). I acknowledge reasoning behind this supposition might not be for everyone, but it works for me, I like it, and think it valid. As I say, the way the Duke actually has her killed is an unprovable point, and of small relevance, but not without interest. Take your pick. Hope that helps Andrew Barker.

Thank you Dr. Barker. I enjoyed your lecture. You made the poem very easy to understand line by line.

That was a masterful analysis. A very sincere thank you

An excellent lecture, and excellent analysis. I disagree with the interpretation that the Duke had his wife killed outright, and prefer the interpretation that he merely had her removed from his home and locked up in a villa or tower where she died of disease or privation.. This strikes me as being a much more likely thing for a wealthy and evil man of his station to have done to an unwanted wife in the time in which the narrator ostensibly lived. In any event, this is one of the great dramatic monologues of the English language, and I love seeing it presented to a wider audience.

I think 'My favour at her breast,' could well have nothing to do with his prowess as a lover but something he had 'gifted' her. In the Bronzino portrait of Lucrezia di Medici. she's holding a jewel up to her breast. I would argue for this fictional Duke, it would be in character for him to expect his duchess to be a 'backdrop' for his expensive family jewels. Perhaps she's not, in his opinion showing enough appreciation for his gifted jewels anymore than his ancient name.

That was a really fun and enjoyable lecture! you make learning fun, I wish you were my English teacher.

Excellent analysis!!!!!!!!!

I really enjoyed it too much. That was the very very simple explanation I ever heard. Many thanks.

Such a talented teacher ❤

Really enjoyed it , i played and assimilated the whole lecture while it was raining in India. Thank you so much for this lecture .Sir your simplicity and charm is worth noticing as man of english literature :)

Best Lecture I've ever seen!! keep doing good work!! thanks a lot! :)

Really enjoyed your lecture, thank you for your excellent teaching which made me understand the great poem that I never did before, well done 👍

It's not an easy piece of writing. I would not have got the message without your guidance. I think the most impressive part for me is to realise how powerful a monologue could be, as a poem. The interactivity with the reader is intense because you can easily engage in the poem while imagining the duke speaking. I really like how Browning writes it, making the whole thing story-like, but indeed it's using the method of "showing not telling". Some others may not get the criticism part without analysing it thoroughly.

Wow wow wow wow wow!! Till yesterday I used to loathe this guy.. Now I can't stop myself from admiring his poems 😅

I love the innocence of people who are not Italian lol. Anyone with an italian father and and irish mother wld understand this poem immediately lol. not all italian men are psychotic but they have crippling jealously. especially if their wife is beautiful. my mother looked like catherine denerve when she was young - she's stunning even now in her 70s. people still stare at her - my mom was always polite but i had never seen her act flirtatious - but my dad would go into a jealous rage anytime a man paid attention to her. his family was from northern italy - descendants of french "nobility" and he could not understand why an irish blue collar daughter was not impressed with him lol. i noticed this with other italian men - when they fall in love it infuriates them. like the other Italian men in his family my father became more gentle when he got older and was able to explain this to me❤

Too good sir your second reading ....enacting of the monologue

This was a good lecture. Browning seemed to have utilized a kind of Shakespearian prolixity of language which enhances it all. It is almost comical. Here is a mad man for sure. What he hated was what was in her. Had he 'caught her in bed' or whatever, it almost seems it would make no difference. She might seem 'in the throws of passion' and not happy. He is such that he is 'jealous of a sunset'!!

This video made me laugh so much! Thank you for making A-Level English Literature fun for me :D

I do believe that he did hint to the was he had her killed when he said ''died along her throat''. It shows the death was swift and sleek, and his mention of the throat makes me insist that he had her slain with a sword or blade. The reference to ''the blush'' in the same sentence (where scientifically blushing is the concentration of blood in a specific tissue, that which is blushing) might be a clue thrown by the Duke to the blood that flowed down her neck in the moment of execution, and his belief that it is the happiness leaving her body.

Immensely enjoyed the way u taught and learnt a lot

Really amazing explanation Thank you so much for this video I am impressed actually

Hi Dr. Baker, Thank you for this lecture, for it helps me quite understand what the poem is trying to say. A student from a community college in the bay area.

Perfect way of explaining, I read this poem yesterday and couldn't make any sense out of it not until now. All thanks to this great tutor

This is by far the best lecture ever on youtube. Sir you have got the wonderful knack of explaining even the toughest stuff into the most easiest way. Stay blessed! 😍

loved the explanation

I really enjoy your Mycroft lectures, would you please do some lectures on contemporary poems?

I enjoyed it a lot, I wish you never stopped making videos this way. The psychopath in this poem reminded me of the psychopathic king in One Thousand and One Nights, by the way.

One word for this explanation - genius

This wonderful lecture appeared in my feed as if "by design," since "My Last Duchess" has always been one of my favorite poems. Thank you for showing me how Robert Browning manages to create this stunning psychological portrait in such a short piece. He was ahead of his time. (And Dr. Barker has another subscription!).

In the last stanza, the Duke compare himself with Neptune. Neptune is taming sea horse, as the Duke taming the Duchess. Neptune lower himself to tame the sea horse, however, Duke tamed his wife by cruel destruction. Neptune and Duke both have power, but they present their power differently. So, it is ironic that the Duke compared himself to Neptune. ''Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without much the same smile?'' Maybe in his mind, authority is very important. He desire of authority and high social class. He think he should be the only one who can gain smile from the duchess. That's how he think about 'respect'. Since he lose 'respect' from the duchess, that's why he kill her... It's a chilling story indeed!

There is some debate as to the degree of the Duke's malevolence. Is he just a haughty aristocrat who sent his former wife to a nunnery over her flirtatious nature; a greedy, manipulative man anxious about securing a sizeable dowry from the father of his future wife? Or is he, as others see him, a psychopathic murderer with an insatiable lust for ownership of all that he desires -- an evil and pernicious narcissist? It has been suggested by some analysts that the Duke must have killed the last Duchess because he twice remarks, "looking as if she were alive". Browning made it clear that it was his intention to have the Duke a murderer, and perhaps he'd have preferred we assume it so for the purposes of the poem. But whether one should be pressed to interpret the poem in the manner it was intended or elect to draw upon history's account of the story, is moot. It would still be reasonable to look at her portrait and comment on her lifelike appearance, were the artist considerably skilled, which we assume Pandolf must have been. Literature, like any art form, should be open to interpretation; one should be free to make one's own conclusions. In the end, the beholder's eye is paramount. Whatever your perspective, "My Last Duchess" certainly has many elements to it which may be construed in various ways. That is why it is such a clever, insightful poem. It is a poem that keeps giving -- the more you read and study it, the more questions arise. This is the hallmark of truly great poetry. Accordingly, anyone has a right to interpret words and phrases in the poem in the manner he or she chooses. Our universe is complex, and science shows us that uncertainties and anomalies are an integral part of its fabric. Each of us is unique in perspective, a factor crucial in our survival and progression as a heterogeneous species. So it is essential that we are not confined in our thinking to rigid evaluation frameworks; an educational system that plies a think-as-I-think model and fosters the notion of an irrefutable academia aids in the demise of our most valuable assets: imagination and intuition. Some claim that the poem is not about the Duke of Ferrara. While it may be apposite in regard to the shaping of an academic study of the poem to not invoke the real Duke, the fact is that Browning was indeed inspired by this very story. In its original publication, the poem was entitled "I. Italy," the companion piece to "II. France" under the general title "Italy and France." "My Last Duchess" (which states the setting as "Ferrara" after the title), is a byproduct of Browning's research for "Sordello", during which he read about Alfonso II d'Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara and patron of the writer Tasso. Staying "inside the poem" is sometimes advised, but who can say for sure what Browning's intentions were or precisely where the seed lay in some of his references? Was he being deliberately ambiguous? Was he leaving room for uncertainty to provoke debate? Did he himself have doubts, as all writers do, about some of the deeper inferences of his words and the ways in which they might be understood. The human mind is mercurial; both writer and reader are capable of ambivalence . Some interpret the "never read strangers like you that pictured countenance...but to myself they turned" line as proof that the Duke had made many other proposals of dowry from a multiplicity of prospective wives; but this is pure speculation. Though we may assume there were others, especially if one chooses to draw upon history's account of Alfonso, the line more likely suggests the Duke's propensity to gloat, at any opportunity and with anyone, over his new-found ability to control his former wife's expression and behaviour. Many see the Duke as a pretentious name-dropper, and that appears to be the case, particularly when he mentions the sculptor -- Claus of Innsbruck -- who cast Neptune taming a seahorse in bronze for him The Duke ensures that the emissary is made well aware of the name in an attempt to further elevate his stature by association. However, earlier in the poem he says "I said Fra Pandolf by design". He stresses "Fra" Pandolf for a different reason: not to name-drop but to make a point of the Duchess's flirtations with the likes of anyone. Fra Pandolf is, we suspect, a very good painter, but he is also a monk, and monks are supposedly celibate. The Duke infers a belief that a virtuous woman would not allow herself to blush in the presence of a man of religion. It's clear that he thinks this is an indication of sexual arousal. Browning uses double-entendre and innuendo quite liberally: "spot of joy", "white mule" and "bough of cherries", suggestive of the Duke's claims of infidelity or, at least, immorality on the part of the Duchess. "Such stuff was courtesy, she thought," he says, "and cause enough for calling up that spot of joy," alluding to his suspicions that the Duchess's take on Fra Pandolf's requests during the painting were misinterpreted. He thinks that she would have taken the painter's comments -- whatever they may have been because the Duke was obviously not present during the sitting (he says, "PERHAPS Fra Pandolf chanced to say") -- as flattery, whereas, as far as the Duke is concerned, the painter would have had nothing other than the most professional of intentions in mind. In a sense, the Duke is trying to ease his conscience, if he has one at all, by telling the emissary about his former wife's indiscretions. He makes her out to be a floozy who could flush with excitement over anything and anyone. At the same time, he gloats over his position and his ability to dispose of her at his whim, sending an unmistakable warning to the emissary (whose job it is to act as a conduit between the two parties) that the next Duchess should behave in accordance with the snobbish requirements of peerage as well as the expectations of a husband prone to jealousy. She should expect neither guidance nor tuition in the matter following the marriage; the Duke has plainly disclosed that he chooses "never to stoop." Browning's intention, it is thought, was to satirise the superciliousness of the elite and, in particular, the attitudes towards women of men of position during his time. He has done an excellent job of that. Furthermore, he has given us insight into the intricacies of power and possession, the subtleties of desire and denial, and the ambiguities of passion and paranoia. This poem is an intriguing psychological study, and the complexities of the human mind validate the position that there is no such animal as a definitive analysis of anything. To claim otherwise is plain arrogance. Footnote: Susanne Langer's "Philosophy in a New Key" discusses two forms of symbolism, the discursive and presentational. The excerpt below highlights their differences and gives insight into the disparity of opinion that abounds in poetry analysis, the general lack of consensus between rational modes of interpretation and more intuitive methods. Quote: "Discursive symbolism is temporal, requiring time to communicate itself through a linear progression of words, controlled by logical, syntactic relations and limited by word denotations. Scientific uses of language are discursive; the words themselves should be transparent, pointing to a precise meaning. There should be no sense of their sound, other possible uses, what they look like on the page, etc. Presentational symbolism is spatial, requiring no time to be grasped as a whole and not subject to the constraints of logic or extrinsic structures. A painting is a good example of presentational symbolism. While language is by nature discursive, all literary uses of language pull toward more presentational forms of symbolic transformation, and poetry is the most directly presentational use of language. Poetry calls attention to the words themselves-their sounds, the rhythms they create, their look and arrangement on the page, their connotations and "emotional baggage," their previous uses in other contexts. In this way, poetry undermines the discursive nature of its medium, language. In fact, a poem demands re-reading, so that individual sections can be understood in the light of an awareness of the whole piece. However, poetry is never purely presentational; its richness and ability to convey both rational and intuitive meanings simultaneously stem from the tension between the discursive and presentational modes. A poem never has a single, definitive meaning, so the key question to ask is not what but rather how a poem means. For this reason, a poem can never be completely translated into another language but must be read in its original form to be fully understood and appreciated."

Thank yo so much! I was blanked when I first read it, but you make it easier only 46:08 mins of listening to you! THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

I loved this lecture but admit I am somewhat traumatized by the notion that the narrator had his wife killed. I have read and listened to this poem at least 30 times and always assumed "I gave commands" meant he commanded her to mend her ways and thereafter she pined away into an inexorable demise. This is much more ghastly and disturbing. It always bothered me that commands was plural and it makes sense with your interpretation. There is a truly wonderful reading of My Last Duchess by Julian Glover from Six Centuries of Verse I recommend for fans of this poem or verse in general. Can't wait to attend more of your lectures!

you're so cute, now i understand everything^_^

Sir you are an amazing lecturer !!!! God bless you

Thank you so much... :) very helpful....

Wow I would never sit down and listen for hour long analysis no matter how desperate I am😂 but I loved how he delivered it was really interesting and of course he is handsome haha

Extremely interesting and pleasant teaching style. Please do a lecture on John Keats' "Isabella: or the Pot of Basil" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Thanks a lot for your guidance. It is very helpful for me. Thanks a lot.

When I first read this poem, I was a bit confused because it was a monologue and it was difficult to state which line was his words and what lines were his imagination or his thinking that what other people would say, which I did not quite get the joke or the funny sacrastic ending. at first But after reading it line by line with your help, I finally get it. I believe that what horrible was not the Duke's treatment of his wife but the horrible nature of the aristocracy in the past, which composed and shaped the personality of the Duke. He was an arrgoant and a jealous man and when I read the poem, I would imagine that he was speaking in a cocky way to the messanger. When he was showing the picture of the Dutchess to the messanger, I think that he was like bragging about his beautiful wife that would make his friends and other people jealous. And indeed it would make them jealous because he would often think about how they would have reacted. But the irony is that, it also made him jealous of his friends beause of the way he was treated by his wife which was no different than his friends. He was not crazy that he just killed her because his wife smiled a lot as the poor Dutchess was only a normal and cheerful person. In fact, it is because of the Dutch's pride that he could not take it anymore and eventually have her killed, which led the readers fear for the fate of the Count's daugther. I want to know more about the technique of "showing, and not telling". Is it a matter of perspective that how we interpret the person telling something to us would affected our interpretation of what he was saying?

Isn't youtube great. All those poor sausages slogging away in university and here we are popping on here and viewing content like this as a pleasure as opposed to a workload.

smart and handsome 😍

I've wrestled with this poem for 30 plus years, but finally feel as if I have a handle on it, thanks to your lecture. I might argue that the Duke's murder of his wife was a bit more prolonged and subtle. I'd also point out that the woman in the painting shown in this video as being a possible inspiration of the poem wears an expression rather more like contempt than anything 'sexy'. At any rate, absolutely top-notch breakdown and analysis of this amazing work by Browning, who, in my opinion, is without doubt one of the Grand Masters of poetry in English. I might go: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Browning, Keats (only for his years), and perhaps Tennyson or Blake. IMHO.

My Last Duchess is a poem that requires rereading. It is an interesting experience to read between what was told by the Duke at the same time getting to know the Duke’s personality. After listening to the poem from the video, it is noticed that the spoken version of the poem is greatly different from the cleverly enjambed text, in which it offers a new way of understanding the poem. Also, the ending the poem with the art piece created a sense of incompletion. While reading the first sentence: “That's my last Duchess painted on the wall”, it formed a recurrence to the ending.

really helpful, I have enjoyed you're lecture and now the text is clear like water

Daaaaaaaamn the ending though. didn't expect that. loved it

His really notoriously difficult poem was considered 'Sordello' in his time. I had 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb' read to myself and others by Allan Curnow in 1968 and 'The Englishman in Italy'. He can be dark, but he also has a sensuousness of detail. Of dark, 'The Pied Piper of Hamlyn' is almost a cruel poem. All the children are arbitrarily shut up in a mountain. He is as merciless as Dante with some of his victims he places in hell, like Uggolino and children who are there because their sin was to be unbaptised and so on. But Caliban upon Setebos is a poem that could be made into a film. It is not really difficult, it is a kind of existential wrestle as Caliban turns over in his mind the whys and wherefore of his existence. It is important to read The Tempest first of course. Possibly Montaigne's essay on Cannibals and some others, remembering that Shakespeare read Montaigne. But it can be understood. The difficulty is that Caliban is himself truing to solve the question of his or our own existence, and meets endless contradictions and ambiguities.

This is for the first time that im commenting on a youtube video.... I just love u sir u made really very easy, i wish if u could be my teacher it would be really an honour

I have to concede that at first I thought the orders given were for someone to tell her that she had to shut up, that she was severely reprimanded. I suppose this was as it was my first reading of it, I thought I had read it but I think I confused it with 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb'. But it is consistent as there is that other poem where a seriously insane man strangles his woman or lover with her hair. Then he seems to justify it. Browning was as dark in some of those poems (dramatic monologues) as Shakespeare say in Macbeath, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus (!), or his endlessly mysterious The Tempest. Hence Browning's brilliant 'Caliban upon Setebos' ('The Sea and the Mirror' is a near surreal philosophic dialogue by Auden that has Caliban and others from The Tempest talking - just as Stoppard wrote about Hamlet via 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' - and I think it influenced John Ashbery's style in some of his long prose poems). Browning is or can be dark, although, 'Home Thoughts from Abroad' is beautiful. My father used to quote that with the: 'That's the wise thrush / He sings each song twice over / Lest you should think he could never recapture / That first, fine, careless rapture.' [But his 'Charge of the Light Brigade' is worry (Read Tolstoy's stories set in Sevastopol during the Crimean War).

HAVE AN EXAM ON 19th C Victorian Poetry and this was AMAZINGGGG

Wonderful! Crisp and very informative. I shall always remember this poem now. Thank you.

Absolutely brilliant. I was riveted from start to finish

I think the statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse mentioned in the last three lines reveals the duke's huge desire of possessiveness, or the desire to monopolize everything. Neptune taming a sea-horse, as if the duke tries to tame his duchess, shows how the duke attempts to control his wife and make her his possession. The statue cast in bronze seemingly conveys the message that the duke wants everything that are in his possession to be kept forever, and for those that he cannot control do not deserve to exist. So he murdered his wife. The statue of Neptune, the god of the sea, not anything else, seemingly implies the pride of the duke that he even conceives himself as powerful as god, for he believes he should be able to control everything in his will. Such art piece of Neptune intensifies the insanity and irrational possessiveness of the duke.

Awesome!

My favorite poem - after hearing this analysis, among others. :)

thank you! for breaking down that long sentence towards the beginning. I've always struggled with syntax, especially this one. I have a question though: what is the meaning of the word "for" in this case? "for never read strangles like you". he said fra pandolf deliberately for the sake of people who have never seen the look, or he said fra pandolf, since/because strangers like him tend to ask him questions. Also how does the conjunctive "and" in "and seemed" work? I've always struggled to work out the grammar of that sentence.

...great explanation, Sir...actually the perfect one...

hello good lecturer ,thanks to give your class and even the poem tells about often smile is wrong to women ,i smile by your worthier and smoothest class ,tq and good to see next one

Thank you very much Sir. If the Duke was a gifted speaker, You are a gifted lecturer.

The Duke is indifference to his wife’s death. It seems that the Duke simply wants to make use of other external objects to satisfy his desire of possessiveness. And his last wife is that object which can fulfill his desire. When his wife can no longer fulfill his desire, he choose to get her killed. In other word, I think that Duke can be regarded as a self-centered person who believe himself can be in charge of anything. He believes that the duchess should only smile in his presence, not also in other people’s presence. As for the last stance, I just fell worried about for the fate of his next marriage, and the fate of the Count’s daughter.

Wonderful and insightful breakdown of a quite veiled and perhaps intentionally constructed poem. Well done! If you will, think for a moment... Is Mr. Browning confessing to something in metaphors? I find it very interesting, given her demise (relegated to a rather obscure cemetery in Florence with the only inscription: E.B.B.) and his being the pinnacle and ultimate resting place in the Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey. Am I the only one detecting the parallel?

Lovely lecture. Thanks for making it so simple

Thank You Sir for sharing this excellent lecture so fascinatingly well done line by line. Really it has been a big help for me to get through some of the difficult lines.

sir plzzz made lectures on other poems I am the student of B.S English and it will be easy to learn for me from your videos

The best poem...ever? Sorry, I am just such a big fan. :)

" A very nice and excellent explanation of the poem". Thank you very much.

What a wonderful analysis. Thank you so much! In addition, I'm interested in the entire situation of him hanging this picture behind a curtain and controlling its viewing. Not the 'normal' habit of an art connoisseur. Hiding, rather than displaying.

I wondered if the mention of the bronzed Neptune and seahorse was a veiled threat to the messenger, warning him against telling the Count and the daughter about the Duke's murderous tendencies. Such a bronze would be quite heavy, the messenger had just tried to run on ahead and perhaps the Duke had picked it up...

Amazing amazing lecture, loved it so much!!!!! THANK YOU❤❤❤❤

The lecturer is hot and that’s enough

Lifewriting 2020. First Person Narrative.

Thank you so much for this video - this vid has really helped me understand this poem.

Text and Experience 2020. Rewards Close Reading.

The Duke, from 'My Last Duchess', and Mr Cheong, from 'The Vegetarian' by Han Kong, share a number of similar qualities. Each man wrongs their respective wife by either in the case of the Duchess, murdered, or in relation to Mr Cheong's wife Yeong-Hye, raped. Therefore, in stating that both men speak in the first person, giving only their account of events and nobody else's, we can also confirm that another similarity between the two is that they are both unreliable narrators. We are not given the accounts of the wives or any other persons mentioned in the texts. After the raping of his wife, Mr Cheong washes himself and when next looking upon his wife, he states, "she was lying there with her eyes closed as if nothing had happened, or as though everything had somehow sorted itself out during the time I'd spent washing myself." giving the reader limited understanding of Yeong-Hye's personal reaction to being raped. Similarly, with the Duke "know[ing] not how" his wife thanked other men they came across, by not giving us an account of why she thanked them or finding out from the men why she thanked them, we have a one sided and therefore suspicous account of events. Bringing these quotes together, we can see that both men care not for including other voices in their story as their lives are the only ones who matter in the stories they tell. The Duchess is dead and Mr Cheong soon divorces his wife. Another similarity between the two male characters is that each of them feels like they are not in the wrong or, in other words, lack a guilty conscience. Both men confess to their crimes, but each crime is written in a way that shows us the actions of their crimes rather than telling us of their sins. Where Browning writes the Duke of Ferrara in a more poetic manner, "I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together." showing how his wife can smile no more, after she is dead. Mr Cheong's description of rape is more direct, but still shows us he is raping her without telling us, "Pinning down her struggling arms and tugging off her trousers... I managed to insert myself successfully". After these events occur, neither the Duke nor Mr Cheong feel a resemblance of a guilty conscience as, we must infer that, they feel they have not performed any wrong acts. The Duke openly addresses his killing of his previous wife to a man who works for a Count who's daughter is set to marry him in the hope he will tell her to not act against the Duke's wishes. Mr Cheong is a man that feels the presence of his conscience, but does nothing in relation to support his rebellious wife. Instead, that overwhelming "darkness and silence of the living room" is enough to remind him of his crimes but, not enough to break his unreliable narration.

This was really helpful.

The last twist of why duchess' death is amazing to read. Aside from the indifference in the way he talked about her death, the dismissing tone of that line is also chilling. After he spent all that time talking about his last Duchess, or more specifically her smile, he just dismissed the death as if a light trivia. The mention of death is not explicit either, but more aesthetic in the way it seemed there was nothing gruesome nor violent about it. The smile was kept frozen in time, "As if alive", as the way the Duke describes the painting.

You are good!!!!! I literally understand this so much. You just saved a life!!!!

thank you so much sir

Thank you so much, Professor. ❤️

i love this guy!!! I have always thought that "showing not telling" is a lost art!

Thank you so much! I was so confused when I first read it, now I understand the poem clearly.

Thank you very much. You are an awesome teacher 😎

It's really helpful changing the complex language to simple language. But the changing of "I call that piece a wonder, now" to "It's good innit" was so funny! The English language really is a spectacle.

I use these to teach, an excellent resource

Excellent teaching, great to hear an English accent. Thank G_d for a simple interpretation in plain English

I have an old encyclopedia from the 1950s that introduces Robert Browning with the title: "The Hardest Poet to Understand".

very good indeed...

Read this poem dozens of times, and this helps make it much more understandable.

I love British poetry.

You narrated this so good, thank you so much this was so helpful

Best ever lecturer I come across.

Are a Greek. I think you're, you resemble Alexander

well done - MANY THANKS

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏very nice explanation ❤❤❤