Dramatic monologue
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
A dramatic monologue is a type of poem, developed during the Victorian period, in which a character in fiction or in history delivers a speech explaining his or her feelings, actions, or motives. The monologue is usually directed toward a silent audience, with the speaker's words influenced by a critical situation. An example of a dramatic monologue exists in My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, when a duke speaks to an emissary of his cruelty. Another example is the modernist poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot and also, in a more contemporary way, "The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team" by Carol Ann Duffy, and "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath.
Influences on the dramatic monologue are both general and specific. In a general way, the dramatic tradition as a whole may have influenced the style of the monologue. Indeed, the style of the dramatic monologue, which attempts to evoke an entire story through representing part of it, may be called an endeavor to turn into poetry many of the distinctive features of drama.
The most important direct influence on the development of the dramatic monologue are the Romantic poets. 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. However, 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 novel is another indirect influence on the dramatic monologue, particularly in the novel's emphasis on closely observed detail to reveal character.