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ME

My Last Duchess

Rhetoric of or in a discourse In making a rhetorical approach to various discursive acts, one may speak of the rhetoric of a discourse--say, Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" (1842)--and mean by that the strategies whereby the poet communicated with his contemporaries, in this case the Victorians, or with modern man, his present readers; or one may speak of the rhetoric in a discourse and mean by that the strategies whereby the persona, the Duke of Ferrara who speaks Browning's poem in dramatic-monologue fashion, communicates with his audience in the poem, in this case an emissary from the father of Ferrara's next duchess. The two kinds of rhetoric are not necessarily discrete: in oratory or in lyric poetry, for example, the creator and his persona are assumed to be identical. To a degree Aristotle's distinction between the three voices of discourse still holds. A poet, according to Aristotle, speaks in his own voice in lyric poetry, in his own voice and throu...

Posted by: Tamara Moore

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