Dramatic Monologue - The Great Discovery of Browning The dramatic monologue is a poetic form that was used by Victorian poets to its fullest, especially by Robert Browning, now considered one of the most talented and prolific dramatic monologists. It worked as a tool to examine issues of the day that may not have been examined otherwise, particularly domestic abuse and religious hypocrisy by allowing the reader to function as an audience member of a dramatic production, making his or her own judgments of the situation being described. The dramatic monologue found its first true audience and home in the Victorian Era. Poets such as Robert Browning used the form. It hasn’t gone away – it’s been used by new poets, such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, John Berryman, and Robery Hayden (American Academy of Poets). Glen Everett, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee, defines three characteristics that distinguish a dramatic monologue from other forms of poetry. The first of these characteristics is a sense of Einfuhlung (imaginative sympathy) that the author explores through the narrator’s point of view. The receiver of this point of view may be another character within the poem, or it may be the reader of the poem. If it is a character, commonly referred to as an “auditor,” the auditor may be “absent…dead…out of earshot…or simply inattentive” (Three Characteristics). The second characteristic is that the speaker in the poem must argue with his or her “second self” (really the speaker him/herself) and rationalize not to the actual listener, but to the speaker him/herself. The third characteristic is that the reader must “complete the dramatic scene from within, by means of inference and imagination” (Three Characteristics). While the author will present clues, the reader must take an active part in creating the scene in which the monologue occurs.....................To get complete note click the below link: goo.gl/2jN2dv
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:10:15 +0000
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