Comparing Ulysses by Lord Tennyson and My Last Duchess by Robert Essay

Comparing Ulysses by Lord Tennyson and My Last Duchess by Robert browning.Ulysses was written by Lord Tennyson and is a poem closely a mythicalGreek character and is a dramatic monologue. Another poem that is adramatic monologue is My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning. Bothpoems ar similar, for example they are both structured similarly, andare both different, one difference being their subject. In this essayI will compare the ii poems, focusing on form, and how language helpsto build up subject matter.Ulysses is a Greek mythical character, and was famous for being apirate, ransacking villages and being a warrior. In Greek literature,Ulysses just seemed to disappear after he got home, and Tennysondecided to write about Ulysses and his thoughts after retiring fromfighting. The poem is written in verse, and seems to be either adramatic monologue or monologue interior. It is hard to know whichone, as a dramatic monologue must have a listener (other than theaudience. Ulysses is talking to someone, his dead soldiers, but asthey are deceased it is difficult to decide if they count as alistener to the poem.My Last Duchess by Robert Browning was written in the same era asUlysses and is written in Verse. This poem is different to Ulyssesas this poem is about a fancied character which is created byBrowning. This is a Dramatic Monologue, as the duke (the charactercreated by Browning) is talking to the servant of the father of apossible bride. To create the effect of speech, Browning uses IambicPentameter, which helps to imitate the rhythm of conversationalspeech, and enjambment frequently.The use of language to present the subject matter is important forboth poets. I... ...isdispleasure from his wife and why, intimately acting as a warning to hisnext wife. So a poem about the Last Duchess is actually a poem aboutthe Dukes likes and dislikes, which again helps to subtly build upthe self centred nature of the character without revealing too muchand loosing the readers i nterest.Both poems are similar and different in many different ways. The mostobvious similarity to both poems is their form, but if we look deeperinto the poem we see that their content and their characters are verysimilar. However, some differences hushed remain in the poem. The mainsubject matter for both poems is death, but the two poems havedifferent feelings towards death. For the Duke, it is somethingordered and controlled by him, but for Ulysses, even though he hasencountered death within his life so much he cannot accept that hewill die.