Topic > Exploring love and its corruption: My Last Duchess, Andrea Del Sarto and Two in the Country

In both My Last Duchess and Andrea del Sarto, Robert Browning explores the concept of love and its ability to corrupt an individual's character and potential through his or her signature diegetic form; the dramatic monologue. Although the form of these two poems is based on an implied audience, the primary agent and central subject is the narrator, rather than the subjects he speaks about. The form itself requires the reader to complete the dramatic scene from the inside, through the use of inference and imagination, using clues provided by Browning's narrators regarding their obsessions and concerns. Differently, Two in the Countryside varies in metrical poetic structure, and consists mostly of iambs, but when this coherence disintegrates, parallel symbolism is created, as the narrator's ideas and love, as well as the language required to express each of them, are identified as unobtainable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Different perceptions and attitudes regarding the nature of loyalty and jealousy within relationship dynamics are explored in both My Last Duchess and Andrea Del Sarto. The overwhelming jealousy and possessive nature of the narrator (the Duke) in My Last Duchess is foreshadowed in the title of the poem, with the possessive pronoun "my" used by Browning to reveal the Duke's disposition and his respect for the Duchess as a being an object under his control. In contrast, Andrea Del Sarto's eponymous narrator, despite being aware that his wife is having an adulterous affair with the "Cousin", chooses to return to the comfort of his relationship, rather than resist domination and control within the dynamic marital. . The pleading tone of “Do you have to go?” is used by Browning to highlight the narrator's desperation to maintain the status quo, but his ultimate inability to impose the boundaries he desires on his partner, highlighted by the use of a question, rather than an imperative imperative form. While the partner's disloyalty in Andrea Del Sarto is objectively present, the Duke in My Last Duchess detects the same trait in the Duchess, but with a clear absence of empirical proof. The adverb “perhaps” presupposes the fanciful nature of the evidence for the Duchess's infidelity, thus corrupting the credibility of the Duke's hypotheses that the “stain of joy [on] the Duchess's cheek” was caused by other men. Faced with the adultery he perceives, the Duke acts violently, ordering the Duchess's execution, asserting his ultimate control over the Duchess, literally objectifying her and forcing her within the confines of a painting. In contrast, Andrea Del Sarto's narrator, despite his hesitations, uses his single imperative of the poem “Go, my love” in a way that does not assert control within her relationship, but instead allows her to continue to behave in the same way as before. This command is used by Browning to highlight that the control exercised by the narrator is completely easy and that, within his own relational dynamic, the power remains in the hands of the partner. Just as in Andrea Del Sarto, the narrator of Due in Campagna struggles to show control over both love and his ideas, highlighting their transitory nature. To experience a space-time paradigm in which love can be tamed and controlled, the narrator invites his listener to imagine the open fields of “Champaign,” or the countryside surrounding Rome. Symbolically, this land is used by Browning to represent a liminal zone where social conventions do not exist.