 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Sonnet 43”  Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess”

Vince Esposito and Lisa Speakman

 Hyperbole – Figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express emotion  Repetition – The recurrence of sounds, words, phrases, lines, or stanzas in a speech or literary work.  Parallelism – The use of a series of words, phrases, or sentences that have similar grammatical form.

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning had poor health.  Fighting with her health she was still able to become one of the most successful and versatile poets in Victorian England.  Her poems caught the attention of poet Robert Browning.  He wrote Elizabeth a love letter and told her he loved her works.  They moved to Italy together and had a child nicknamed “Pen”

 She wrote 44 sonnets explaining how she felt fear, excitement, and hope when she fell in love.  She was shy about sharing her feelings and published her sonnets under Sonnets from the Portuguese

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

 Line 3- “My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight” shows a good example of personification.  Making her soul reach  Line 6- “…by sun and candlelight” is an example of imagery.  It appeals to the sense of sight  The poem follows a rhyme scheme ABBAABBA making it a Petrachan sonnet

 In lines 1, 2, 5, 7-9, 11, 12, 14- “I love thee…” is an example of repetition.  The speaker talks about her love and proclaims she loves him freely, purely, and passionately.  In the last line she claims that she will love him even after death, or forever.

-She wrote 44 Sonnets describing how she fell in love after years of bad health. -Waited 3 years after her and her husband were married to show him her poems and he insisted on publishing them -Wanting to hide her feelings form the public she published them under a misleading title Sonnets from the Portuguese. -She also wrote literature intended to spark social reform.

A hyperbole is a exaggeration or a overstatement. Example From Text: With my lost saints-I love thee with the breath Smiles, tears, of all my life This is a hyperbole because you cant really love someone with all of those things she is describing she is just exaggerating.

Parallelism is the similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses Example From Text: I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use The way she says I love thee at the start of the sentences is how she uses parallelism.

Repetition of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line, stanza, or metrical pattern is a basic unifying device in all poetry. Example From Text: I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight The sounds and syllables in the words depth breadth, height and sight are examples of repetition.

MY LAST DUCHESS Cheyenne Anders Katie Kracher Aaron Ceckowski

Terms Realism- Literary movement that seeks to portray life as it is really lived. Dramatic Monologue- One speaker talks about an important event to someone who does not interrupt him. Rhymed Couplets- Rhymes at the end of two consecutive lines of poetry.

Poet: Robert Browning He was a very analytical poet and was good at “dissecting the hearts and minds of his characters”. After he went to London University for a year critics mocked his poems and did not care about his plays. He married a girl named Elizabeth Barrett who loved his work but had very poor health. She was also a poet and the author of “Sonnet 43”.

Poet: Robert Browning He married Elizabeth in Italy and had a son in Then later in 1861 she died. Robert never remarried. Robert developed bronchitis. He found out about good reviews he received on his last book and said “How gratifying” He then died a couples hours afterwards in Italy.

Poem Written from the perspective of a guy telling a visitor about a painting of his deceased wife. He describes the duchess as an amazing wife. We can tell that he loved her Talks to a visitor that we do not know exactly who it is Something happened to the Duchess but we do not know exactly what.

Literary Devices My last Duchess is a poem about a guy telling one of his guests about a picture on his wall. This poem shows people how life was during the time it was written. The realistic quality of the work sets the tone for this piece as sad but it also sounds like the speaker is remembering good things about his wife. Use of Rhymed couplets are used to help make the poem flow in a more sing song way.

Comprehension How does the speaker feel about his last Duchess. The speaker describes the last duchess by saying that she was basically everything to him, which is the way that Robert Browning felt about his wife. At the end of the Poem the speaker starts talking about another work of art, which might point to the fact that he is moving on with his life.

My Last Duchess By Robert Browning Chelsea Barnette and Erica Embry Page 981

R OBERT B ROWNING Lived Born on May 7 th Was a rather impulsive, fearless child. Read his father’s history books. Homer Attended London university at age16. Paracelsus and Pauline were his first two works. Even wrote some stage plays between In May, 1845 he met Elizabeth Barrett, who shortly after became his wife.

A BOUT THE P OEM This poem stemmed from the history of the 16 th century. Alfonso, the duke of ferrera The poem talks about a King meeting with an emissary to potentially arrange his second marriage. Throughout the poem the Duke is giving his visitor a tour of his home. They come upon a picture of his deceased wife. As he begins to explain this picture, he reminisces about past times with her. Although as he continues his story, he explains how flirtatious she was with many people.

A BOUT THE P OEM C ONT. He then goes to tell how her departure was his doing once the flirting escalated, because she didn’t appreciate “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name”. Shortly after that, he nonchalantly returns to arranging the marriage with yet another woman.

V OCABULARY Dramatic Irony: When the Audience knows the outcome of a situation but the characters do not. Realism: writing in which the ordinary, familiar, or mundane aspects of life are represented in a straightforward or matter-of- fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is. Rhymed Couplet: A unit of verse consisting of two successive lines, usually rhyming and having the same meter and often forming a complete thought