Comparative Study Between Ulysess and My Last Duchess Essay

Have a little read Comparing Ulysses by overlord Tennyson and My detain Duchess by Robert Browning. Ulysses was written by Lord Tennyson and is a metrical composition about a mythical Greek character and is a dramatic soliloquy. Another verse form that is a dramatic monologue is My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning. Both poems are similar, for example they are twain structured similarly, and are both different, one difference being their subject. In this essay I will compare the two poems, focusing on form, and how language helps to build up subject matter.Ulysses is a Greek mythical character, and was famous for being a pirate, ransacking villages and being a warrior. In Greek literature, Ulysses just seemed to disappear after he got home, and Tennyson decided to write about Ulysses and his thoughts after retiring from fighting. The poem is written in verse, and seems to be either a dramatic monologue or monologue interior. It is hard to know which one, as a dramatic monologue must have a listener (other than the audience. Ulysses is talking to someone, his dead soldiers, but as they are deceased it is difficult to decide if they count as a listener to the poem.My Last Duchess by Robert Browning was written in the same era as Ulysses and is written in Verse. This poem is different to Ulysses as this poem is about a fictional character which is created by Browning. This is a Dramatic Monologue, as the duke (the character created by Browning) is talking to the servant of the father of a doable bride. To create the effect of speech, Browning uses Iambic Pentameter, which helps to imitate the rhythm of conversational speech, and enjambment frequently.The use of language to present the subject matter is important for both poets. In Ulysses, the poet builds up a picture of the characters in bodily process by using words such as still, dull and pause. These adjectives create an apprehensiveness of what life is like for Ulysses, and this is then contrasted with words of his past such as roaming, ringing and windy. These words create a contrast between the activeness of the past, and the stillness of the present. This helps the reader imagine what life was like for the character when he was young.