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精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上我的前公爵夫人 墙上的这幅面是我的前公爵夫人， 看起来就像她活着一样。如今， 我称它为奇迹：潘道夫师的手笔 经一日忙碌，从此她就在此站立。 你愿坐下看看她吗？我有意提起 潘道夫，因为外来的生客（例如你） 凡是见了画中描绘的面容、 那真挚的眼神的深邃和热情， 没有一个不转向我（因为除我外 再没有别人把画上的帘幕拉开）， 似乎想问我可是又不大敢问； 是从哪儿来的这样的眼神？ 你并非第一个人回头这样问我。 先生，不仅仅是她丈夫的在座 使公爵夫人面带欢容，可能 潘道夫偶然说过：“夫人的披风 盖住她的手腕太多，”或者说： “隐约的红晕向颈部渐渐隐没， 这绝非任何颜料所能复制。” 这种无聊话，却被她当成好意， 也足以唤起她的欢心。她那颗心 怎么说好呢？要取悦容易得很， 也太易感动。她看到什么都喜欢， 而她的目光又偏爱到处观看。 先生，她对什么都一样！她胸口上 佩戴的我的赠品，或落日的余光； 过分殷勤的傻子在园中攀折 给她的一枝樱桃，或她骑着 绕行花圃的白骡所有这一切 都会使她同样地赞羡不绝， 或至少泛起红晕。她感激人好的！ 但她的感激（我说不上怎么搞的） 仿佛把我赐她的九百年的门第 与任何人的赠品并列。谁愿意 屈尊去谴责这种轻浮举止？即使 你有口才（我却没有）能把你的意志 给这样的人儿充分说明：“你这点 或那点令我讨厌。这儿你差得远， 而那儿你超越了界限。”即使她肯听 你这样训诫她而毫不争论， 毫不为自己辩解，我也觉得 这会有失身份，所以我选择 绝不屈尊。哦，先生，她总是在微笑， 每逢我走过；但是谁人走过得不到 同样慷慨的微笑？发展至此， 我下了令：于是一切微笑都从此制止。 她站在那儿，像活着一样。请你起身 客人们在楼下等。我再重复一声： 你的主人伯爵先生闻名的大方 足以充分保证：我对嫁妆 提出任何合理要求都不会遭拒绝； 当然如我开头声明的，他美貌的小姐 才是我追求的目标。别客气，让咱们 一同下楼吧。但请看这海神尼普顿 在驯服海马，这是件珍贵的收藏， 是克劳斯为我特制的青铜铸像。Robert Browning: a famous 19th century (Victorian) British poet, particularly well-known for his early monologue My Last Duchess (我的已故的公爵夫人). In the poem, a duke speaks about his dead wife. The poem is about murder, mystery and intrigue, but all in indirect allusions (暗示). Readers may sense that the duke kills his wife or causes her death, but no evidence is shown. The language of the poem is difficult to understand. The use of dramatic monologue forces readers to work hard to find the meaning behind the dukes words. When talking about Robert Browning, we have to mention his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She was a famous poet, too. She wrote many sonnets, a type of 14 line poem, the same as Shakespeare did. Elizabeth and her husband Robert had a great love affair, almost like a movie. Browning was six years younger than his wife. They ran away to Italy to get married.SummaryThis poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Dukes marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchesss early demise: when her behavior escalated, “he gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection.Form“My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they use enjambmentgthat is, sentences and other grammatical units do not necessarily conclude at the end of lines. Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure when they come, but rather remain a subtle driving force behind the Dukes compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite a performer: he mimics others voices, creates hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his personality to make horrifying information seem merely colorful. Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the speaker is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem; and the revelation of the Dukes character is the poems primary aim.CommentaryBut Browning has more in mind than simply creating a colorful character and placing him in a picturesque historical scene. Rather, the specific historical setting of the poem harbors much significance: the Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemporaries, for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in the place of, the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to again explore sex, violence, and aesthetics as all entangled, complicating and confusing each other: the lushness of the language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The Dukes ravings suggest that most of the supposed transgressions took place only in his mind. Like some of Brownings fellow Victorians, the Duke sees sin lurking in every corner. The reason the speaker here gives for killing the Duchess ostensibly differs from that given by the speaker of “Porphyrias Lover” for murder Porphyria; however, both women are nevertheless victims of a male desire to inscribe and fix female sexuality. The desperate need to do this mirrors the efforts of Victorian society to mold the behaviorgsexual and otherwisegof individuals. For people confronted with an increasingly complex and anonymous modern world, this impulse comes naturally: to control would seem to be to conserve and stabilize. The Renaissance was a time when morally dissolute men like the Duke exercised absolute power, and as such it is a fascinating study for the Victorians: works like this imply that, surely, a time that produced magnificent art like the Duchesss portrait couldnt have been entirely evil in its allocation of societal controlgeven though it put men like the Duke in power.A poem like “My Last Duchess” calculatedly engages its readers on a psychological level. Because we hear only the Dukes musings, we must piece the story together ourselves. Browning forces his reader to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, and this adds to the fun of reading his work. It also forces the reader to question his or her own response to the subject portrayed and the method of its portrayal. We are forced to consider, Which aspect of the poem dominates: the horror of the Duchesss fate, or the beauty of the language and the powerful dramatic development? Thus by posing this question the poem firstly tests the Victorian readers response to the modern worldgit asks, Has everyday life made you numb yet?gand secondly asks a question that must be asked of all artgit queries, Does art have a moral component, or is it merely an aesthetic exercise? In these latter considerations Browning prefigures writers like Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. 专心-专注-专业
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