Robert Browning

The Ring and the Book

• Bk 1 ln. 84-90: (422)

Here it is, this I toss and take again:
Small quarto-size, part print part manuscript:
A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when heart beats hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since. 
Give it me back! The thing's restorative 
I' the touch and sight.

My Last Duchess

• rhymed couplets - invoking that rococco Pope heritage subtly
• dramatic monologue
  • 1st person lyric with implied interlocutor
  • a scene in which a reader is asked to figure out the full story
  • psychological
  • what the speaker says isn't usually clearly aligned with the author
• two levels - a double poem (Armstrong 1993)
  • poem working in two ways: ideological work (here, a critique of a very scary man) alongside lyric expression
• what is the poem asking and how does it answer?
  • how couldn't you flinch or run screaming? Because of the Duke's power, the system they're locked in
• the speaker is Alfonso II, the Duke of Ferrara - RB's early readers didn't have such notes
  • talking to the Count of Tyrol's agent about his next wife
  • duke higher up than count
  • talking about dowry: the count is such an open-handed man that I don't need to specify terms - the girl is, of course, my object
• what does complete conversational/situational control look like
  • a social situation the agent can't escape
  • we'll go together because normally you'd be 5 steps behind
• the duchess's perspective: the male gaze literally objectifying -- a painting and the daughter is my next object
  • it is an art object so could be related to discourses about collecting as social control: Black 2000
• the duke makes the law: what he's done could be perfectly legal
• Can you truly control another person?
  • the threat of female vitality, emotion
  • blushing is involuntary
• courtesy
  • courtliness
  • flattery
• So, you can, but it's a pyrrhic victory because the duke doesn't truly possess her
  • formally the duchess and the agent are controlled and silenced
  • does he succeed with the next wife, assuming the agent does his job?