EN 2100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Ruby, Dramatic Monologue, My Last Duchess
Document Summary
Looked at the sonnet and that in shakespeare"s poems, it is about gender politics: men were at the centre of the action, women are passive and they are dominated. Look to the hunted metaphor of the men hunting for love while the women are the deers. In the elizabethan era, the world is imperfect and poetry is the perfect form: love attains the ideal and it attains its highest form only as an abstract concept. Men unrealistically appraise women and judge them against these unattainable standards. Damned if they do, damned if they don"t. The courtly love tradition says that men should strive to be better and you need to prove yourself worthy to the woman: the focus is on men - women are just tools to make men better. The woman is not described at all: we know that she"s young, coy, and that she is chased, the speaker desires her.
