THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY

‘History is just one thing after

another.’

Do you agree or disagree with this

statement?

LO:to explore the power of identity through

‘Checking Out Me History’
John Agard reading his poem

• http://
www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/z7fjm
p3

• Listen carefully to this reading. In a

moment, I will be asking you for your
first impressions.
LO: to explore the power of the identity through ‘Checking Out Me History’

Discuss in pairs: who do you think

the poet is?
Having read the
poem, what kind
of person do you
think wrote it?

Race? Afro Guyanese

Gender? Male

Nationality? Guyanese
Personality? Opinionated?

Currently lives? Britain

THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY

Development: First impressions

• What is going on?

• What message is the poet trying to

convey?

• Why might he have chosen to write

in a way which shows off his accent?

• Who is the intended audience?

• What conflict is being presented?

 Using your anthology,
highlight and label as many
poetry techniques as possible

Have you included these …?

• Ellipsis
• Lyricism
• Colloquial language
• Phonetic spelling
• Italics
• Lack of punctuation
THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY
Why does the poet use these techniques?

Techniques Examples and analysis short lines

italics
ellipsis

non-standard
lack of english
punctuation
repetition

enjambment lack of
punctuation
a range of
phonetic
spelling historical
events /
figures
colloquialism
rhyme
 Find three pieces of evidence
for the following:
• Internal conflict
• Conflict between races
• Conflict between what we are told
and what is really true
• Conflict for individual freedom and
power of the state

Extension: Choose any of the conflicts explored in the poem.

Answer the following question …

What is the purpose of this conflict?

Which of these paintings would you rather
have in your home? Why?

The Card Players Covent Garden Tube,

Paul Cezanne, Keith McBridge
1890s.

Suprematist
Composition,
Kazimir Malevich,
Urban Rainbow, 2008
Namora, 2005
 Why do people buy art?

£268million $585
The Card Players Covent Garden
Paul Cezanne, 1890s. Tube, Keith
McBridge

$12.95 $68.5million
Urban Rainbow, Suprematist
Namora, 2005 Composition,
Kazimir Malevich,
 THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY

What is the poem about?

How? The poem is a dramatic monologue. This means the poem is
written in the voice of a character, a male narrator - an imaginary
Italian Duke.

When? Browning wrote the poem in 1842. However, it seems likely

that his idea for the poem was based on Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara,
whose first wife died after three years of marriage in 1561. The
subject matter of the poem – the ‘marriage market’ - would have
ensured that the poem was topical in 1850s Britain.

What? The Duke now wants to marry the Count’s daughter. He is

discussing this with the Count’s representative. As he does so, he
shows his guest around his palace. During the conversation and
tour, he reveals a portrait of his previous wife – his ‘last duchess’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZxq3r7TlHo
 Pronouns and Names
• Highlight all the pronouns in MLD
• Who else features in the MLD? List
them and explain who they are.
• Rank order the characters in the poem
– who has the most power? Then look
at how they are referred to – by
name, title or pronoun. What effect
does this use of name, title or pronoun
have?
 Death and violence
• Highlight all of the words that link to
death/violence
• What do they reveal about the Duke?
• Which phrase shows the Duke had
the Duchess killed?
• Why does death and violence link to
the theme of power?
 Body and actions
• Highlight all of the words linked with
body parts or actions
• What themes emerge?
• What do these words reveal?
• How is this linked to power?
 Imagery
• Highlight all of the images created
• What is the effect of these images?
• Which images link to the theme of
power?
 Rhythm
• Look at the last words of every line –
what do you notice?
• Read each line aloud in turns – how
many beats are in each line?
• Why is the monologue structured in this
way? What does it tell us about the
Duke?
• How does having the Duke speak in this
way link to power?
Browning has used two artworks to
frame his poem:
“Notice Neptune,
“that’s my last
though, Taming a
Duchess painted on
sea-horse, thought a
the wall”
rarity”

Explain why you think the poem starts and ends with
an art work linking with the theme of personal power.

The art work might represent… Because of the art

work, the Duke seems…
 In pairs…

• One of you will look at The Duke. This will be

in-depth quotation analysis.
• One of you will look at The Duchess. This will
be finding and interpreting evidence.

You must complete all the work on your chosen

character, in detail. You have 20 minutes.

THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY

 The Duchess
Find evidence for the following points. Aim to find at least three pieces of
evidence for each.

• The Duchess’ beauty

• The Duchess - alive or dead?
• The Duchess as art
• Looking at The Duchess
• The Duke’s uncertainty
THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY
• Iambic Pentameter Couplets

• Browning himself described this poem as a "dramatic lyric" – at least, Dramatic Lyrics was the
title he gave to the book of poems in which "My Last Duchess" first appeared. The "dramatic"
part of the poem is obvious: it has fictional characters who act out a scene.

• The "lyric" part is less clear. "My Last Duchess" doesn’t read like a typical lyric poem. Its
rhymed iambic pentameter lines, like its dramatic setup, remind us of Shakespeare’s plays and
other Elizabethan drama. But it is about the inner thoughts of an individual speaker, instead of
a dialogue between more than one person. That makes it more like the Romantic lyrics that
came before it in the early part of the nineteenth century – stuff by Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Shelley that are all about the mind of the individual. So, really, Browning’s title Dramatic
Lyrics says it all. "My Last Duchess" is what would happen if Shakespeare’s Macbeth married
Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" and they had a baby. It’s a hybrid of a play and a poem – a
"dramatic lyric."

• As for meter, "My Last Duchess" uses the rhythm called "iambic pentameter." Iambic means
that the rhythm is based on two-syllable units in which the first syllable is . . . oh, drat, your
eyes are glazing over. Stay with us here. Okay, an iamb goes "da DUM," like that. Pentameter
means that there are five ("penta") of those in a line. Listen: "There’s MY last DUCHess
HANGing ON the WALL" – that’s iambic pentameter. Okay, okay, you could argue that "on"
shouldn’t be stressed and so forth, but that’s the basic idea.
• Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, some people like to claim that iambic pentameter is the most "natural"
rhythm for the English language to fall into, and that we often speak in iambic pentameter without noticing. Nobody’s
ever really been able to prove this, and probably nobody ever will, but it’s a persistent "myth" about meter, so you
should know it’s out there. It also means that lines written in iambic pentameter feel conversational to us. If you listen
to someone read "My Last Duchess" aloud (check out our "Links" section for some online audio recordings by
contemporary poets and scholars), you might not even notice that it has a fancy meter, because it sounds more like
normal speech than some other poetry does.

• The other thing about iambic pentameter, like we said before, is that Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists
used it in their plays. Browning, a very highly educated writer, knew this, and his decision to use this meter in a poem
that already feels sort of like a play is a direct allusion to the patterns of monologues (speeches made to others) and
soliloquies (speeches made while alone) in drama. "My Last Duchess" is more of a monologue than a soliloquy, because
there is a character listening to the Duke in the poem. He’s not speaking his thoughts aloud to himself while he’s alone,
the way Hamlet does.

• Of course, although the iambic rhythm makes us think of Elizabethan drama, the rhymed couplets (pairs of rhymed
lines that occur together) of the poem keep tying the Duke’s speech into tidy packages, even though his thoughts and
sentences are untidy. Both Shakespeare and the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth used iambic pentameter
without rhyme, a form called blank verse. But Browning introduces couplets into the mix. We think you can probably
guess why it might be more appropriate for the control-freak Duke of Ferrara to speak in harsh, structured, rhymed
lines than in unrhymed ones.
 THEME: POWER OF IDENTITY

“That’s my last duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she

were alive.”

“Sir, ‘twas not / Her husband’s presence only, called that spot / Of
joy into the Duchess’ cheek” For each quote,
try to present at
“she liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went least two
everywhere.” different
interpretations
“Who’d stoop to blame / This sort of trifling?” and aspects of
the Duke’s
“ … This grew; I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped character.
together.”
“There she stands / As if alive.”
 So what’s the Point
Read the statements below, decide which one you agree with most and find some evidence to support
it!!!
The Duke was jealous and angry about his wife’s relationship with the artist, Fra Pandolf,
and therefore, he had her murdered.

The Duke was jealous and angry about his wife’s relationship with the artist, Fra Pandolf,
and therefore, he had them both murdered.
The Duke loved his wife dearly.

The Duke loathed his wife and resents even the memory of her.

The Duke misses his wife.

The Duke views his wife as an object, a piece of art, something he owns.

The Duchess died and the Duke is still in mourning.

The Duke is furious because the Duchess left him and ran away with the artist, Fra
Pandolf.
The Duke loves his wife but loathes the artist, Fra Pandolf.
LO: To explore the use of language in ‘Tissue’

Types of tissue

Which types of
tissue have the most
power?
WHY?
LO: To explore the use of language in ‘Tissue’

Exploding quotations –HOW?

Delicate and fine, yet paper holds
power as it contains the written Connotations of
word – links with laws etc. “light” – goodness,
beauty, guidance,
power. Verb “shine” –
reflective, like a star

“Paper that lets the light

shine through, this
is what could alter things.
Paper thinned by age or touching”
Use of the
conditional here –
paper has power
to change, but only
in certain
circumstances
Makes us think about
how time can change
things, even laws that
have been written can
be forgotten.
“touching” – tactile
nature of books, links
with physical tissue.
LO:
To explore the use of language in ‘Tissue’
Core: Highlight key
words/phrases
Task Identify the technique
In pairs/group of three: used
Explode your quotation
together
Challenge: Explain the
effect of the
words/phrases
• What does it
make the
reader
think/feel?
• What does
imply about
how the people
are feeling?

Super challenge:
Explain what the writer
Key words: extended metaphor, verb, adjective,
might be saying about
enjambment, the feelings people
stanza, connotations, personal pronoun have about their
homeland
Paper that lets the light
shine through, this
is what could alter things.
Paper thinned by age or touching
the kind you find in well-used books,
the back of the Koran, where a hand
has written in the names and histories,
who was born to whom,
the height and weight, who
died where and how, on which
sepia date,
pages smoothed and stroked and
turned
transparent with attention.
If buildings were paper, I might
feel their drift, see how easily
they fall away on a sigh, a shift
in the direction of the wind.
Maps too. The sun shines through
their borderlines, the marks
that rivers make, roads,
railtracks, mountainfolds,
Fine slips from grocery shops
that say how much was sold
and what was paid by credit card
might fly our lives like paper kites.
An architect could use all this,
place layer over layer, luminous
script over numbers over line,
and never wish to build again with
brick
or block, but let the daylight break
through capitals and monoliths,
through the shapes that pride can
make,
find a way to trace a grand design
with living tissue, raise a structure
never meant to last,
of paper smoothed and stroked
and thinned to be transparent,

turned into your skin.

LO: To explore the use of language in ‘Tissue’

Market Stall
The stallholder – will stay on
your market stall and explain
your exploded quotation to
other members of the class.

The shopper – will travel

around the room listening to
the explosions of other pairs
and annotating their copy of
the poem in the anthology.
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The Emigree’

What three words would you use to

describe your country when you were
younger?

What three words would you use to

describe your country now?
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The Emigree’

An Émigrée is someone who is forced

to leave their country for political or
social reasons.

• What does this suggest about the

themes of the poem?
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The Emigree’

1.Using two different highlighters, find

examples of the following:

• The modern city

• Memories of the city

2. Then annotate focused on the

technique and effect.

‘There was once a country …’

The use of ellipsis suggests to the reader
that this country has changed
dramatically.
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The Emigree’

The Emigree
The character who narrates the poem
is not the writer – this is called using a
persona.

WHY would someone who is not an

‘emigree’ write a poem about this
topic?
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The emigree’

What am I
Analysis marked on?
Rumens’ narrator uses contrast between the modern
city of the emigree and the memory she has of the
1. Detailed
place. She says her memory is “sunlight clear” interpretations
implying that the memory is bright and she is able to of theme
recall it easily. The “sunlight” has connotations of 2. Quotations
beauty and joy, as if her city was a place of great 3. Correct
wonder. The narrator describes the city now as “it terminology
may be sick with tyrants”, personifying the city into 4. Analyse
something that can actually become “sick” and
language
essentially die. The contrast of the “sunlight” and the
“sick” makes us understand that the emigree herself 5. Analyse
is emotionally confused by the contrast between her structure
memory and reality. Rumens might be addressing the 6. Context
issue of immigration in order to question the power of 7. Compare all
governments to control the movement of people, these with
even though where they come from might be “sick another poem
with tyrants”. This idea is reinforced later in the poem
when the narrator states that “they accuse me of
being dark in their free city”; ironically the new city is
not “free” for her as she is “dark”.
LO: To explore the power of the state in ‘The emigree’
What am I
Write your own… marked on?

1. Detailed
Rumens uses… “…” interpretatio
ns of theme
This implies…because… 2. Quotations
The image of “…” has 3. Correct
terminology
connotations of … 4. Analyse
The narrator might feel… language
5. Analyse
Rumens might be… structure
The theme of power is seen… 6. Context
7. Compare all
The theme of conflict is these with
seen… another