Compare And Contrast My Last Duchess And La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and Browning’s “My Last Duchess” both revolve around revenge. We are introduced to men who swear vengeance on other characters. Yet, the mindsets of these men are, in some aspects, very different. To truly comprehend a story, we have to understand why authors make their characters behave the way they do in addition to the message being presented. In the case of “The Cask of Amontillado” and “My Last Duchess,” why do both narrators believe murder is totally necessary? To fully recognize underlying meanings, we need to analyze characters from a narrative and scientific perspective. For example, there is actually scientific reasoning to classify narrators of these stories as “psychopaths.” It is very likely that the narrators of these two stories suffer from several mental disorders, which fully give reason to the events of the stories. To see the true perspective of how both stories handle murder, revenge, and the mental health of the narrators, we need to look at why the narrator of “My Last Duchess” feels offended, why the narrators choose murder, and how the narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado” carries out the murder.

In the following essay I will discuss and form a clear analysis about Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘Exchanging Hats’ that was published in 1979. Elizabeth Bishop is an American short-story writer that was born in 1911 and loved writing poems to describe the dominating side between male and female. It addresses many things such as crossing dressing, gender roles and it brings out a deeper meaning of fashion. It refers to the world famous story of Alice in Wonderland. It is done in such a way where everything that is being describe is not being said directly but rather describing actions that symbolizes different principals of theories. The different key features also plays an important role for example the tone that is being formed by the lyrical voice that can be seen as a nephew or niece. This specific poem is also seen as an exposition of what Judith Butler will call a ‘gender trouble’ and it consist of an ABBA rhyming pattern that makes the reading of the poem better to understand. The poem emphasizes feminist, gender and queer theories that explains the life of the past and modern women and how they are made to see the world they are supposed to live in. The main theories that will be discussed in this poem will be described while analyzing the poem and this will make the poem and the theories clear to the reader.

    Mistreatment, manipulation, and lack of unconditional love much like they were prevalent themes in the antebellum era when author Kate Chopin existed, happen more and more everyday in relationships and marriages.  During these two era’s a relationships could only exist within the same race, two different cultures were not allowed to be together. Kate Chopin introduces a theme of gender bias to exhibit obvious contrast between types of love portraying a message to the reader, through her use of symbolism and irony, that proves Desiree’s unconditional love for Armond and his lack of unconditional love for his wife and child.

Similarly, “My last duchess “ incorporates the same selfless commitment explored in “Cousin Kate”. The duke, the narrator of the poem is identified as a monster since he murdered his wife because of her immature persona. The duchess’ “ looks went everywhere” and the duke also mentioning that other men could draw her to “blush”. We learn within the poem that the duke was a famous man, and because he married a tart, he wouldn't allow “his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” to become badly reputed. This indicates that the duke was committed to his family name and wouldn’t let careless women destroy his

In both stories written by Robert Browning, My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover, Robert brings up how both of the women in each story die in some way, one that we don’t know of and we still are asking the question and the other by being murdered. Each story has a different twist to it though they both speak up on the same topic, death. Death is something not everyone expects to reader, especially with titles like these ones but it is always a good thing to have a nice twist within them. Both Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess speak up on the death of each women but one story doesn’t really get into the details while the other does which leaves a bunch of questions to be asked.

Isabella is Keats’ sixth longest poem and it is important to prove him that he has the quality of writing in a new, modern way and it is published in 1820. He is one of the most important poets of nature writing and emphasizes his love toward nature which is also reflected to be female. He also deals the issue of women and nature in his poem Isabella and in Lamia. Keats’ Isabella, like Lamia, is a poem expressing the tragedy of love but it contrasts two ways of seeing: sentiment and reason. In both poems a sympathetic but weak pair of lovers is destroyed by their love. But Isabella and lamia are not written at the same time. Isabella is completed in April 1818 and Lamia in September 1819. There is

Looks are not all of what women want because that is only skin deep. For women, they look for certain traits that make up the perfect apple to their eyes. There are many qualities that women would want in a man that would make a perfect male romantic partner. There are four qualities that are most desired which are also shown through the perspective of the child in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”; through the prospective of the abused wife in Jo Carson’s “I Cannot Remember All the Times”; and through the prospective of the child in Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”. The male figure’s traits, which women want in a man, are portrayed though quotes

The poet Anne Bradstreet resorts to her stance as an industrious woman to further elaborate her poems using her two significant roles in Puritan society: wife and mother. In “The Author to Her Book” we can contemplate how the role of the mother has taken a big toll on her writing. Consequently, the poem itself is comprised of one long stanza in which the conceit correlates the poem and an ‘ugly child’, represented by the “ill-form’d offspring” (1). Why did she decide to use this juxtaposition? An idea that has come to my mind is how “poor” (25) circumstances are conveyed as a liability weighing over her head, ergo affecting her reasoning and making her believe that the only way in which she could possibly develop her poetry is through experience. Also, as a female poet, she probably wanted to transmit an idea that wouldn’t be perceived as conventional, but would accomplish telling her apart from the rest of the male poets.This leads us to the crux of our argument: Bradstreet is taking up the role of a pioneer by using

The sixteenth century English poet George Gascoigne’s poem “For That He Looked Not upon Her” is a poem of pain and suffering that is received from this other person or lover who is a woman. Gascoigne uses an excellent approach in portraying the speaker’s feelings through Gascoigne’s closed-form Shakespearian sonnet, visual diction, and animalistic and nature like imagery.

I had never saw Louis this melancholy; I wondered what brought it about. Surely, it was not meeting the baroness tonight; I would think it had more to do with Boudreaux. When Louis took my hand and told me that he loved me, I knew it did.

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English explorer who became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth after he severed in her army. He was the half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert who went lost at sea in the efforts of trying to cross the North Atlantic in an attempt to colonize the North America. Sir Walter Raleigh was knighted in 1584 and sought to establish a colony. Between 1585 and 1589, he helped establish a colony near Roanoke Island, which is on the coast of what is now North Carolina, and he named the colony Virginia. He chose these name in honor of the virgin queen, Elizabeth. When a second voyage was sent in 1590, they found no trace of the colony Sir Raleigh established and the settlement is known as the “Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.”

Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” is about trying to help people understand poetry. Most people use poetry to relate to a certain life situation and just see the poem at face value. Very rarely do people actually dissect a poem, or see a poem for what it actually is. In the first stanza, “poem” is associated with “a color slide”, it creates a solid imagery that readers have to squint their eyes in order to look at the slide clearly under the light or by using the projector. In the second stanza, “poem” is compared to “a hive”, it might be difficult to fully understand a poem, but one can prosper despite the complications, similar to risking one’s safety to have physical contact with bee hives. In the third and fourth stanza, Collins compares “poem” to “a maze” and “a room in a house”, this reveals the feelings of hurt, defeat and doubt.

Both the stories of Equitan and Guigemar invoke the debate between selfish love and selfless love. The character Equitan embodies the principles of chivalry, where he is “much admired and much beloved in his own land” (Marie de France 13-14). Although he embodies the ideal man for courtly love, Equitan is selfish when he enters relationships. Equitan pursues the seneschal’s wife and they enter an affair with each other. This affair is comprised of physical attraction and has no moderation at all. Equitan and the seneschal’s wife are so enveloped in their affair that they want to eliminate and kill the seneschal even though he poses no threat to the affair. This lack of moderation is Equitan and the seneschal’s wife’s downfall, and they are

The Color Purple takes place around the 20th century in rural Georgia, 30 years before World War II. Walker’s literary works display the ways in which both women are objectified and treated unequally by men within their lives. According to Lauren Berlant in Modern Critical Interpretations of The Color Purple, Walker creates The Color Purple as a way to represent historical events. “The taking of lands, or the births, battles and deaths of Great Women” with the scene of “one woman asking another for her underwear" (Berlant 4). These issues through relationships and problems of women of color. Walker explores and provides insight into the issues that women of color experience through her works, The Color Purple an epistolary novel. Walker defines

Standing Female Nude, written by Carol Ann Duffy, is a poem which describes the condition of a prostitute who is struggling to make a living. Duffy, as with a majority of her other works, attempts to give a voice to voiceless women in the middle and lower economic classes in an effort to promote her feminist agenda. This poem is in fact very layered and explores multiple aspects which may not be spotted on a superficial level, and enables her to transmit her ideas to the readers. Duffy puts across her main ideas of society’s treatment of the prostitute versus the treatment of males, and the prostitutes introspective views.