ENGLISH 45C Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Dramatic Monologue, Nocturne, Time Perception
Document Summary
With prev works, talked about how form/content worked together or were at odds. Hardy"s darkling thrush - one of agonies is that speaker seems to have lost faith in everything, can"t understand what bird sings/why. Despite constitutive despair in poem, doesn"t lose hope in possibility of poetry to represent that despair; the poem itself is another happy goodnight air, alongside tho not in contact w/ birdsong. Think of prufrock as poem always at odds w/ its own form; always threatens to become another kind of poem. Written in mask of someone else; like one of most famous, rob browning"s my last. Similar issues as in dubliners - 1st person narrators who aren"t author. Middle-aged, insecure guy filled w/ disappointmt; not even an anti-hero, just a non-hero. Both bored w/ and terrified of soc. Like gabriel conroy, not quite depressed, but anxious; worried abt others" perceptn of him. Constant allusions to marvell"s coy mistress, where speaker tries to seduce mistress.
