Introduction to the Poem

About the lecture

In this module, we take a brief look at Browning's life, before introducing the dramatic monologue form and the associated critical terms "persona" and "interlocutor". After this, we examine the form of the poem (rhyming couplets) as well as looking at the the true story of the Duke of Ferrara's alleged murder of his young wife that may have inspired this poem.

About the lecturer

Clive Wilmer is one of the English team at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge. He teaches the period 1830 to the present day and Practical Criticism. His special interests reside in the areas of Victorian and Modernist poetry, as well as in Victorian aesthetics and social criticism.

He is the author of seven books of poetry, the latest of which is his New and Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2012). The editor of Penguin selections of John Ruskin and William Morris, he has written and lectured extensively on Ruskin, Morris and Ezra Pound; he is also the current Master of Ruskin's charity, the Guild of St George. He has published a book of interviews with contemporary poets, Poets Talking (Carcanet, 1994), and Cambridge Observed (Colt Books, 1998), an anthology of writings about Cambridge over the centuries. In 2005 he was awarded the medal Pro Cultura Hungarica by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture in recognition of his many translations of Hungarian poetry. He is currently editing the posthumous Selected Poems of Thom Gunn for Faber and Faber.