English 219 at Rutgers University: Browning's "My Last Duchess"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ธ.ค. 2014
- Rutgers English professor William C. Dowling takes his class through a close reading analysis of Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess."
Topics include: metaphor and meaning, explicative paraphrase, syntactic analysis, and close reading.
Video by Robert Andersen: www.robertandersenfilm.com
Professorial correction. Instead of "Othello" at 21:37 Prof. Dowling meant to say "Iago." For "Henry the Fifth" at 23:37 he asks viewers to mentally substitute "Henry the Fourth."
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Simply the best teacher I have ever encountered. Thanks for sharing.
Great didactic and entertaining class by Mr Dowling. He is so good. THANK YOU!!!!
15:41
Bookmark. So far it's fantastic. As a teacher, I completely agree that treating a poem as information to be unpacked ruins the poem!!
The end puzzled me for the longest time. The implied physicality throughout is so brilliantly handled! Thinking about it, it seemed to me that not only had the envoy deferred place of rank to his superior (perhaps Duke) it has a Soprano/Mafioso-esque "Let's all go down together and make with the nice" feel. Then the heavy hand on the shoulder pulls the envoy back. The mouse is about to escape when the cup comes down one more time for a menace of a more personal nature.
He takes the time to point out yet another example of domination. This I think is meant specifically for the envoy. The Sea Horse of mythology (the type that would concern Poseidon) was a hippocampus--half horse, half fish--that supposedly pulled Poseidon's chariot. They are his servants and It implies that the envoy had better get this right or else he's in for it also.
I listened to another interpretation and they thought the envoy had tried to scurry down the stairs ahead of the Duke to warn everyone. They also thought the switch to the statue was a sign of the Duke's psychopathology (pretty statue, fresco of murdered wife, it's all the same to me).
"It's better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."-Machiavelli
Yeah, it also sounds like taming... of the shrew... :P :D
And he could be Neptune, the center of the universe.
Awesome
This is insane. Fantastic job professor!
This sounds relevant today .
Very well prepared lecture and such a poised and suave personality you are Sir
close and serious lecture.
41:54 he goes mad...😂
Isn't bringing in the meaning of Fra in the church breaking the rule stated in the lecture that the historical reality should not matter?
Professorial correction. Instead of "Othello" at 21:37 Prof. Dowling meant to say "Iago." For "Henry the Fifth" at 23:37 he asks viewers to mentally substitute "Henry the Fourth."
Only one, audio only. This is a link to an excerpt from his class on Lord of the Rings. th-cam.com/video/jUk0TO1DgtU/w-d-xo.html
Some great a ideas, but a professor who limits his students thinking to his own ideas is a limited teacher. How many times do you need to use the word "no"?
Both is true. he has an excellent approach, but uses a technique that sets my teeth on edge--asks a question with only one (THE) answer. At least he's thought through his own answers instead of getting them from a teacher's course book. My guess is he has given this class many, many times and has evolved a shorthand that leaves the students grasping for "his probable" correct answer.
I *LOVED* his way of stepping into the poem. Showing that yes, we are the audience but there is an audience within the poem.
People decry the verbose nature of older writing, but in the best of it each turning of a phrase adds a particular shade of meaning.
A very thoughtful comment Lisa - I agree with you. I will make my own video on this poem one day.
Mr Salles Teaches English That would be excellent I think! It's lovely to hear other viewpoints that are well thought out even if they disagree. Dr. Andrew Barker believes the envoy attempts to go on before the Duke to warn the people while Dr. Dowling thinks he gives the Duke pride of rank in going down the stairs. I do believe the last statue is significant for the envoy himself rather than a return to art appreciation.
I think both views can be reconciled. Isn't the Duke's whole purpose to allow the warning to be given, so that the next wife knows the score?
RUTGERS 1000
Hello, could u tell me how to apply to this Rutgers university? Do they have PhD program there? Please reply!!!
Check their website before TH-cam. Any university should have that info on their website.
Ananya, Such a naive enquiry begs the Question: Do you honestly think you are "ready" for University? Or are you looking ahead to a day about five years hence, when you conceivably might be?
47:28
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 that 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, the professor has a right to interpret words and phrases in the poem in the manner he chooses, as do we all. 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 to 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 education 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.
The professor, though undoubtably a good teacher, makes several assertions that can only be construed as assumptions. One example is his 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 remains 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 (not Fernando, as the professor says), the fifth Duke of Ferrara and patron of the writer Tasso.
For the professor to infer that the internet has nothing of value in regard to the poem is extraordinary. Yes, people do post "dumb, stupid stuff" but to sweepingly claim that the prodigious volume of information online "never" provides part of the answer betrays an attitude of pomposity akin to that of the Duke. Incidentally, this lecture is freely available on the internet, so does that automatically disqualify it as being worthy of consideration?
Staying "inside the poem" may be good advice, 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 .
Another example is the professor's elucidation of the "never read strangers like you that pictured countenance...but to myself they turned" line. To claim that the Duke had made "numerous" proposals of dowry ("transactions" as the professor terms them) from a "multiplicity" of prospective wives 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, with all respect to the good professor, 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" (2nd ed. New York: New American Library, 1949) 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, i.e., the general lack of consensus between rational or scientific 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."
Ironically for this particular topic, the video is out of context. Prof. Dowling's 219 class -- which I was lucky enough to take 16 or so years before this was posted -- was an introductory level course in which he taught close reading, a skill set that I still tap to this day. I'm certain he would forcefully argue his particular interpretations with anyone in this thread given the opportunity, but the point of the course (and I would presume the video itself, which strikes me as a kind of advertisement for an undergraduate classroom experience everyone should be lucky enough to experience) is more about the process of getting inside the poem and less about this interpretation of this poem -- understanding the world constructed in a piece, based on the precise meaning of the words in historical context of their usage from the OED.
Strewth Mr Goldney, After reading your breathtaking critique, the learned Professor might well contemplate an early retirement or going back to the drawing board.
@@frankdsouza2425 😉
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How does this have less than 200 likes in almost ten years? There are Marvel movies less entertaining than this lecture.
The analysis works but the teaching style is enough to make any potential poet in the class turn to engineering in order to find something resembling beauty. No wonder the classical arts are dying.
I made out alive, and a much better poet.
Is it me or is this guy a bit pompous? What’s wrong with trying to find a message by “unpacking” the poem?