Course description

The dramatic monologue is a poetic genre that was created (it seems) simultaneously and independently by Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It became an important poetic vehicle during the nineteenth century and then lost much of its prominence during the twentieth century. The dramatic monologue genre itself has been difficult to define. In this course, we will study many of the great nineteenth-century dramatic monologues, as well as some from the beginning and end of the twentieth century. We will also read some scholarly attempts to define the dramatic monologue and explore its origins. We will focus a lot of our discussions on the revelation of character and the tension between the poetic form and the dramatic spirit of the poem.