Dramatic monologue

Last updated November 16, 2024

Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:

The single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment […].
This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors' presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.
The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's temperament and character.^[1]

Types of dramatic monologue

One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is romantic poetry. However, the long, personal lyrics typical of the Romantic period are not dramatic monologues, in the sense that they do not, for the most part, imply a concentrated narrative. Poems such as William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc , to name two famous examples, offered a model of close psychological observation and philosophical or pseudo-philosophical inquiry described in a specific setting. The conversation poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge are perhaps a better precedent. The genre was also developed by Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, beginning in the latter's case with her long poem The Improvisatrice.^[2]

The novel and plays have also been important influences on the dramatic monologue, particularly as a means of characterization. Dramatic monologues are a way of expressing the views of a character and offering the audience greater insight into that character's feelings. Dramatic monologues can also be used in novels to tell stories, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , and to implicate the audience in moral judgements, as in Albert Camus' The Fall and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist .

Examples

The Victorian period represented the high point of the dramatic monologue in English poetry.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses , published in 1842, has been called the first true dramatic monologue. After Ulysses, Tennyson's most famous efforts in this vein are Tithonus, The Lotos-Eaters, and St. Simon Stylites, all from the 1842 Poems ; later monologues appear in other volumes, notably Idylls of the King .
Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach and Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse are famous, semi-autobiographical monologues. The former, usually regarded as the supreme expression of the growing scepticism of the mid-Victorian period, was published along with the latter in 1867's New Poems.
Robert Browning produced his most famous work in this form. While My Last Duchess is the most famous of his monologues, the form dominated his writing career. The Ring and the Book , Fra Lippo Lippi , Caliban upon Setebos , Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister and Porphyria's Lover , as well as the other poems in Men and Women are just a handful of Browning's monologues.

Other Victorian poets also used the form. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote several, including Jenny and The Blessed Damozel; Christina Rossetti wrote a number, including The Convent Threshold. Augusta Webster's A Castaway,Circe, and The Happiest Girl in the World, Amy Levy's Xantippe and A Minor Poet, and Felicia Hemans's Arabella Stuart and Properzia Rossi are all exemplars of this technique. Algernon Charles Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine has been called a dramatic monologue vaguely reminiscent of Browning's work. Some American poets have also written poems in the genre—famous examples include Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".

Post-Victorian examples include William Butler Yeats's The Gift of Harun al-Rashid, Elizabeth Bishop's Crusoe in England, and T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Gerontion .

Studies

A major study of the dramatic monologue was published in 1977 by Alan Sinfield.^[3]

Related Research Articles

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson,, was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

Felicia Dorothea Hemans was an English poet. Regarded as the leading female poet of her day, Hemans was immensely popular during her lifetime in both England and the United States, and was second only to Lord Byron in terms of sales.

"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), written in 1833 and published in 1842 in his well-received second volume of poetry. An oft-quoted poem, it is a popular example of the dramatic monologue. Facing old age, mythical hero Ulysses describes his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far-ranging travels. Despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, Ulysses yearns to explore again.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Neoclassical Hellenism is a term introduced primarily during the European Romantic era by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

The Keepsake was an English literary annual which ran from 1828 to 1857, published each Christmas from 1827 to 1856, for perusal during the year of the title. Like other literary annuals, The Keepsake was an anthology of short fiction, poetry, essays, and engraved illustrations. It was a gift book designed to appeal to young women, and was distinctive for its binding of scarlet dress silk and the quality of its illustrations. Although the literature in The Keepsake and other annuals is often regarded as second-rate, many of the contributors to The Keepsake are canonical authors of the Romantic period.

Charles Theodosius Heath was a British engraver, currency and stamp printer, book publisher and illustrator.

Noah Comet is a professor of English literature at the United States Naval Academy. He specializes in Nineteenth Century British Literature. He is known for his book called Romantic Hellenism and Women Writers from Macmillan and several scholarly articles, among them essays in The Wordsworth Circle and the Keats-Shelley Journal on poets Letitia Landon and Felicia Hemans, and articles on John Keats and Lord Byron, including a 2016 essay on Byron's influence on early explorations of Yellowstone. He has also written essays on nature and ecotourism for The New York Times, The Denver Post, and The Baltimore Sun.

Gilbert Stuart Newton was a British artist.

Edward Francis Finden (1791–1857) was a British engraver.

Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist.

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, about 1820.

Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, was a two-volume 1842 collection in which new poems and reworked older ones were printed in separate volumes. It includes some of Tennyson's finest and best-loved poems, such as Mariana, The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, The Lotos Eaters, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Two Voices, Sir Galahad, and Break, Break, Break. It helped to establish his reputation as one of the greatest poets of his time.

Celia Moss Levetus (1819–1873) was an English writer. Her best known work is The Romance of Jewish History, which she published in serial form with her sister Marion Moss in 1840.

Memoirs of the literary ladies of England from the commencement of the last century (1843), by Anne Elwood, is a group biography of British women writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

References

↑ M. H. Abrams, gen. ed. "Dramatic Monologue." A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Thomsan Wadsworth, 2005. 70-71.
↑ Serena Baiesi. Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Metrical Romance, 2009, p.56-58.
↑ Sinfield, Alan (2013) [1977]. Dramatic monologue. Routledge revivals. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-83848-1.

Sources

Howe, Elisabeth A. (1996). The Dramatic Monologue. Boston: Twayne Publishers. pp. 166 pages. ISBN 0-8057-0969-X.
Byron, Glennis (2003). Dramatic monologue. New York: Routledge. pp. 208 pages. ISBN 0-415-22937-5.
Arco Publishing (2002). Arco Master the Ap English Language & Composition Test 2003 (Master the Ap English Language & Composition Test) . New York: Arco. pp. 288. ISBN 0-7689-0991-0.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] M. H. Abrams, gen. ed. "Dramatic Monologue." A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Thomsan Wadsworth, 2005. 70-71.

[2] Serena Baiesi. Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Metrical Romance, 2009, p.56-58.

[3] Sinfield, Alan (2013) [1977]. Dramatic monologue. Routledge revivals. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-83848-1.

[1]

[2]

[3]