Question

Q1Critically analyse the title of the poem My Last Duchess.

Q2 What is the message in the poem 'After great pain a formal feeling comes"??

Answer 1

Q1 - The misogynistic character of the poem is a severe contrast to Browning himself who—while writing in the persona of men like the duke, who dominated (and barely loved) their wives—penned endearing love poems to his own Elizabeth.

Q2 - “After great pain” is structurally looser than most Dickinson poems: The iambic meter fades in places; line-length ranges from dimeter to pentameter; the rhyme scheme is haphazard and mostly utilizes couplets (stanza-by-stanza, it is AABB CDEFF GHII); and the middle stanza is five lines long, rather than Dickinson’s typical four. Like most other Dickinson poems, however, it uses the long rhythmic dash to indicate short pauses.