Speaker, Voice and Persona

This is Unit Five of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: the speaker is not the author, and the poem that proves it. Unit four closed by asking whose attitude the tone belongs to. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off at a semicolon: the voice in a poem is a construction the author made, complete on the page, and it may be foolish, lying or murderous while the author is none of those. Everything the exam asks about a speaker is answerable from the page because the voice is all there. We fix the words first: speaker, voice, persona, and the glossary's point of view. Then the dramatic monologue, the form built on one speaker nobody contradicts, and what that form makes possible. Then Browning's Duke of Ferrara, walked line by line from the portrait on the wall to the charge against his wife, and from the word stoop to the four clauses in which a woman dies. Last, the anchor's own reading of the Duke and its theme statement, reported as the anchor's. By the end you will be able to separate speaker from author and use the three terms. To define the dramatic monologue and its engine. To follow the Duke's case and watch it collapse. To read the confession in his repetition, his syntax and his understatement. And to attribute the anchor's interpretation rather than adopt it.

Six entries on the words and the form: speaker against author, why the exam needs the distinction, voice and persona, point of view, and the dramatic monologue with what it makes possible.

The voice is something the author built.

AIL 0401 The Speaker Is Not the Author

The voice in a poem is a construction the author made, and it may be foolish, lying or murderous while the author is none of those. The glossary carries no headword for speaker, so the standard sense applies: the one who utters the lines. A speaker may be wrong about everything, and still be the voice.

No question here is biographical.

AIL 0402 Why the Exam Depends on the Distinction

Sample question ten asks for the speaker's state of mind. If speaker and author were the same, the answer would be biography, and the board says the exam needs no familiarity with particular works. The question is answerable because the voice is on the page, complete, for reading, and that completeness is the point.

Persona is a voice put on.

AIL 0403 Voice and Persona

Voice names the manner in which a speaker speaks; persona names a speaker deliberately adopted and distinct from the writer. The glossary defines neither, so both are used in their standard senses. Swift's public-spirited economist from the last unit is a persona in exactly this sense, a voice put on for the purpose.

Position, not manner.

AIL 0404 Point of View, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives point of view as the stance from which the storyteller or narrator tells the story. That is a prose term and unit ten takes it up properly. For now note that it names a position, where voice names a manner, and the exam asks about both, so the two must not be confused.

One speaker, one listener, no reply.

AIL 0405 The Dramatic Monologue

The glossary defines a dramatic monologue as a poem dramatic because it is a speech presented to an audience, usually of one person, and a monologue because no other character talks. Everything the reader learns arrives through one speaker who cannot be cross-examined, so all the evidence passes through the speaker.

The speaker gives away more than he means.

AIL 0406 What the Form Makes Possible

Because no one contradicts the speaker, the poem must let him contradict himself. The reader assembles a truth the speaker did not intend to give. That gap between what the voice reports and what the poem shows is the engine of the form, and reading the form means reading for that gap.

Six entries on the Duke's tour: the situation, the opening lines, the word last, the painter named by design, the charge against her, and what the evidence amounts to.

A widower showing off a portrait.

AIL 0407 My Last Duchess: The Situation

The anchor's dramatic-monologue chapter takes Browning's My Last Duchess. A Duke shows a visitor the portrait of his dead wife. The anchor identifies the speaker as Alfonso the Second, Duke of Ferrara, and the listener as an envoy negotiating the Duke's next marriage, which is the fact that makes the tour a message.

Praise of the painter, and a death notice.

AIL 0408 "Looking As If She Were Alive"

The poem opens: that is my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive. The phrase is offered as praise of the painter. It also tells the reader, by the second line, that the woman is dead, and the death arrives as an aside, which is how the Duke treats it.

Last implies a next.

AIL 0409 The Weight of "Last"

My last Duchess means the previous one, and it implies a next one. With an envoy standing beside him arranging that next marriage, the possessive and the ordinal do a great deal of work. The Duke's first three words already establish what he thinks a wife is, and the whole attitude is in them.

He controls who may look.

AIL 0410 "I Said Fra Pandolf by Design"

The Duke explains that he named the painter deliberately, because strangers never read that pictured countenance without asking. He controls who sees the portrait and what they are told about it. In life she was looked at by others; in paint she is shown only when he chooses. The control is the point, not the art.

Her offence was ordinary courtesy.

AIL 0411 The Charge Against Her

His grievance is that she thanked men. He says she thanked men, good, but thanked somehow as if she ranked his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody's gift. The offence is that her courtesy was not reserved for him alone, and nothing he reports is misconduct of any kind.

The case collapses on inspection.

AIL 0412 What the Evidence Amounts To

Read as evidence rather than as accusation, his complaints describe a woman who smiled at people and liked things. He supplies no act of infidelity. The poem hands the reader the whole case and lets the reader see it is no case at all; he offers no act, only her manner.

Eight entries on the confession and the anchor's reading: stoop three times, the commands, the litotes, the return to the picture, the bronze and why he shows it, then the anchor's reading and its theme, attributed.

One word, three times, self-convicting.

AIL 0413 "Stoop", Three Times

He asks who would stoop to blame such trifling, allows that even skill in speech would involve some stooping, then says he chooses never to stoop. The repeated word reveals a man for whom explaining himself to his wife was beneath him. The poem never says so; the repetition does, and repetition is evidence on this exam.

The murder hides in a semicolon.

AIL 0414 "I Gave Commands"

The Duke says she smiled whenever he passed, but so did she at everyone; this grew; he gave commands; then all smiles stopped together. Four clauses, no stated act, and a woman is dead. The syntax of unit two matters here, because the murder hides in a semicolon, and here the governing idea pays off: he never names what he ordered.

Litotes, doing the characterising.

AIL 0415 Why That Understatement Works

All smiles stopped together is litotes, the deliberate understatement defined in the last unit. Saying less than the occasion demands makes the speaker seem unmoved, and the reader supplies the killing the words decline to name. The technique is the characterisation, and the reader supplies what he omits.

The phrase returns, changed.

AIL 0416 "There She Stands as If Alive"

Immediately after the commands he returns to the picture: there she stands as if alive, will it please you rise. The repetition of the opening phrase now reads differently, and the Duke moves to business without pause. Nothing in his manner marks the confession he has made; he notices no confession at all.

Neptune taming a sea-horse.

AIL 0417 The Neptune Bronze

On the way downstairs the Duke points out a bronze of Neptune taming a sea-horse, cast for him by Claus of Innsbruck. The anchor reads this as a symbol of the control the Duke intends to exert on his new bride, and says he has an ulterior motive in showing it. The anchor calls this a deliberate signal.

The tour is a message.

AIL 0418 Why He Shows It to an Envoy

The man beside him is negotiating a marriage. Showing a portrait of a wife who displeased him, then a statue of a god taming a beast, is a message to the family of the next one. Read this way the poem is not reminiscence but a threat delivered politely, and this reading is available, not compulsory.

The anchor's reading, attributed.

AIL 0419 The Anchor's Reading of the Duke

The anchor's chapter states that the Duke's speech reveals his character, that he believes on the basis of no evidence that his Duchess flirted, and that he has her executed. It concludes he is pathologically jealous, a product of deep-seated insecurities. That is the anchor's reading, reported as such and not as the only one.

A theme claim is an interpretation.

AIL 0420 The Anchor's Theme

The anchor names the poem's main theme as the destructive power of jealousy arising from an arrogance that masks low self-esteem. A theme statement is an interpretation, and decision D6 requires it be attributed. A candidate may argue a different theme from the same lines, so attribute it and do not adopt it silently.

That is the speaker separated from the author, the form, the Duke worked through, and the anchor's reading attributed, with the governing idea paid off at the semicolon. You can hold speaker apart from author, say why sample question ten depends on it, use voice for manner and persona for a speaker adopted, and keep the glossary's point of view as a position rather than a manner. You can define the dramatic monologue as the glossary does, one speaker nobody cross-examines, and name its engine, the gap between what the voice reports and what the poem shows. You can follow the Duke from the portrait, through last and by design, to a charge that is ordinary courtesy and a case that is no case. You can read the confession in stoop three times, in the four clauses where a woman dies unnamed, in the litotes that makes him seem unmoved, and in the return to business where he notices nothing; and you can report the Neptune bronze, the Duke's pathology and the theme of jealousy as the anchor's readings, attributed. Part two asks what the exam would make of him.