Poetry, Year 11: My Last Duchess, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Exposure (Power and Conflict option)

A dramatic monologue

HintA two-word term: the second word means a long speech by one person.

The whyWe hear only the Duke, so we have to judge him from what he lets slip. He means to show off a painting and ends by revealing himself.

smiles

HintWhat she gave too freely, in his opinion.

The whyHe never says what the commands were. Most readers take it that he had her killed. The calm, short clauses are what make it chilling.

A servant of a Count, sent to arrange the Duke's next marriage

HintThe visitor's master has a daughter.

The whyHe speaks of “The Count your master's known munificence”, meaning generosity: he is negotiating a dowry for a new wife while describing what he did to the last one.

nine-hundred-years-old

HintThe age of his family title.

The whyHe is angry that she thanked everyone alike, as if his ancient name were worth no more than a bough of cherries. His complaint shows pride, not any fault of hers.

He now controls completely who may look at her

HintIn life he could not decide whom she smiled at.

The why“(since none puts by / The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)”. As a painting she is a possession he can cover and uncover.

The Duke's own wish to tame and control his wife

HintA powerful figure mastering a weaker creature.

The whyHe moves from one art object to the next as if both were the same kind of thing. The poem is in rhyming couplets, though the sentences run over the line ends so the rhyme is easy to miss.

Death

HintWhere the valley leads.

The whyThe phrase echoes Psalm 23 in the Bible. Each stanza ends on the six hundred, until the last lines of the poem turn them into something to honour.

“Some one had blunder'd”

HintIt does not say who.

The whyTennyson does not name the officer at fault. The line is brief, blames nobody by name, and the poem moves straight on to the soldiers' obedience.

reason; die

HintThey may not question, only act and fall.

The whyThree lines of the same shape and rhyme sound like a drill. Whether the poem admires this obedience without reserve, or lets its cost be seen, is a question to argue.

Crimean War

HintFought in the 1850s on a peninsula in the Black Sea, against Russia.

The whyIt happened at the Battle of Balaclava in October 1854. Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, wrote the poem within weeks, after reading a newspaper report.

The galloping of the horses

HintSay the line aloud and listen for hooves.

The whyA foot of one stressed and two unstressed syllables is called a dactyl. The falling, driving beat carries the reader forward with the charge.

Noble

HintAn adjective for people of high character.

The whyThe poem ends on praise of the men, not on the blunder. Tennyson is making sure they are remembered.

nothing

HintThe opposite of what you expect in a war poem.

The whyThe men wait for an attack that does not come. The repeated line makes the reader feel the waiting, and the pointlessness of it.

The weather: the cold, wind and snow

HintLook at the poem's title.

The whyBullets are called “Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow”. The wind is described as “merciless iced east winds”.

An attacking army

HintDawn usually brings hope; here it brings another assault.

The whyThe daylight they should welcome is described in the language of the war. Nature has become the enemy.

Half-rhyme (also called pararhyme)

HintIt is not a full match of sounds.

The whyThe rhymes never quite click shut, which leaves the reader as unsettled and unsatisfied as the men.

dying

HintThe same thing that is happening to the men.

The whyThe soldiers' faith is failing with their bodies. The fifth line of each stanza is short, and several of them are questions or bleak statements like this one.

He was killed in action, one week before the war ended

HintThe Armistice came on 11 November.

The whyAlmost all his poems were published after his death. He wrote that his subject was war, and the pity of war.