Speaker, Voice and Persona

This is Unit Five of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one left the Duke of Ferrara on the stairs beside his bronze, with the anchor's reading of him attributed. This part asks what the exam would make of him, and then leaves the poem. The governing idea from part one was that the voice is a construction, complete on the page. This part pays it off at the marker of a persona: the voice never notices itself, and that unawareness is placed for the reader to catch. First, the speaker-attitude options that would be live on the Duke, the ones that fail, and the tests of reliability the poem teaches. Then persona carried to Swift's proposer and Donne's arguing lover, and the listener who never replies. Then a disclosure: the anchor defines irony in two incompatible ways, and the course follows the glossary. Then the speaker-attitude question itself, which is unit four's tone question narrowed to one person, with the board's Sonnet forty-four item and a four-step procedure. Last, three traps and the end of the procedure units. By the end you will be able to test a speaker's reliability. To read a persona by its unawareness and find its listener. To state both definitions of irony and use the right one. To run the four-step procedure on the named object. And to defeat the three traps.

Four entries on the exam and the Duke: the options that would be live, the options that fail, the pattern of the self-convicting speaker, and three tests of trust.

The politeness needs accounting for too.

AIL 0421 What the Exam Would Ask of This Poem

A speaker-attitude question would offer paired options from the last unit's lexicon. Possessive but urbane, jealous yet self-satisfied, or menacing beneath courtesy would all be live. The answer must account for the politeness as well as the murder, because both are on the page, and an option ignoring his manners is incomplete.

Nothing here is mourning.

AIL 0422 The Option That Would Fail

Remorseful would fail. So would grief-stricken. Nothing in the monologue mourns, and the speed of his return to business rules both out. Candidates select them because a widower discussing a dead wife suggests grief, which is the trap of answering from the subject: the subject suggests grief; the manner denies it.

Read a defence as testimony.

AIL 0423 The Self-Convicting Speaker

Browning's Duke is the clearest case of a pattern worth carrying: a speaker whose own words supply the evidence against him. When a voice defends itself at length, read the defence as testimony and ask what it concedes. The concessions are usually where the poem is, so ask what the speaker concedes.

Three tests for a speaker's account.

AIL 0424 Whether a Speaker Can Be Trusted

Some speakers report accurately and some do not, and the poem gives the means to tell. Look for claims the speaker cannot know, judgments that outrun the facts offered, and detail that undercuts the claim it was meant to support. The Duke does all three, and the evidence of unreliability is internal.

Four entries that carry persona beyond Browning: Swift's proposer, the signal that marks a persona, Donne's constructed lover, and the silent listener all three address.

The proposer is not Swift.

AIL 0425 Swift's Persona Revisited

Swift's proposer is a persona in the strict sense: a constructed speaker whose views are not the author's. He is reasonable, statistical and monstrous. Reading his proposal as Swift's opinion is the same error as reading the Duke as Browning, and it is an error the exam can test, in prose instead of verse.

The voice never notices itself.

AIL 0426 How a Persona Is Signalled

A persona is marked by the gap between what the voice asserts and what the text demonstrates. Swift's proposer never notices his own atrocity; the Duke never notices his confession. That unawareness inside the voice is the signal, and it is always placed for the reader to catch. Here the governing idea pays off: unawareness is the marker.

A rhetorical position, not a diary.

AIL 0427 Donne's Constructed Lover

The speaker of Donne's love poems argues, wheedles and reasons at a listener who never answers. He is a rhetorical position rather than a diary entry. Reading those poems as biography mistakes an argument in verse for a report of feeling, and the arguments are often deliberately overstated; the overstatement is the argument.

Identify who is being addressed.

AIL 0428 The Silent Listener

Donne's poems, Browning's monologue and Swift's pamphlet all address someone who does not reply. The addressee shapes what the speaker chooses to say and to hide. Identifying the listener is therefore part of reading the voice, and the exam does ask who is being spoken to, so the addressee shapes the concealment.

Four entries on a defect in the anchor: it defines irony twice, the course follows the glossary, the chapter's reading survives its label, and the poem's irony gets its proper names.

Two definitions, one anchor.

AIL 0429 The Anchor Defines Irony Twice

This course's anchor gives two different definitions of irony in two places. The glossary quotes Cicero, saying one thing and meaning another, then names verbal, dramatic and situational kinds. The Browning chapter instead calls irony a behaviour or event contrary to expectation. Those are not the same claim, and the divergence is disclosed here.

The course follows the glossary.

AIL 0430 Which Definition This Course Follows

The course follows the glossary, because it is the fuller account and matches standard usage. The chapter's definition describes only situational irony while presenting itself as a definition of irony generally, so a candidate using it would have no name for the verbal irony this exam tests most. The chapter's version omits verbal irony.

The reading holds; the label does not.

AIL 0431 What the Chapter's Reading Still Shows

Its definition is narrow, but its reading is sound: the Duke condemns his wife's behaviour and reveals her to be an innocent free spirit. That gap between what a speaker intends and what a reader sees is genuine irony on either definition, so the analysis survives the terminology. Keep the analysis, replace the term.

Dramatic mainly, verbal in places.

AIL 0432 Naming the Irony in This Poem

By the glossary's scheme the poem runs on dramatic irony, since the reader knows what the Duke does not know he is revealing. His individual phrases also work as verbal irony where his praise indicts him. Both terms are available and the question will indicate which it wants; two kinds, both present.

Four entries on the question type: tone narrowed to one person, attitude toward a named object, the board's own sonnet item, and the four-step procedure.

Tone, narrowed to one person.

AIL 0433 The Speaker-Attitude Question

This type names the speaker and asks about state of mind or attitude toward something in the passage. It is the tone question narrowed to one person, so the lexicon of unit four applies unchanged, and the evidence is still diction and sentence shape. The lexicon carries over without alteration.

Answer about the named object only.

AIL 0434 Attitude Toward a Named Thing

Often the question asks a speaker's attitude toward one named object rather than in general. A speaker may be tender toward one thing and contemptuous toward another in the same passage. Answer about the named object, not about the speaker's overall temper, because one speaker can hold several attitudes at once.

One sonnet, two question types.

AIL 0435 The Board's Sonnet Forty-Four Item

Sample question ten asks the speaker's state of mind in Shakespeare's Sonnet forty-four, the poem unit two worked for its syntax. The same passage serves a grammar question and an attitude question, which is the clearest evidence that these skills are not separable on this exam. The skills arrive together, not in turn.

Speaker, listener, diction, options.

AIL 0436 A Procedure for Speaker Attitude

Identify the speaker, identify who is addressed, find the two or three most loaded words, then test the paired options half by half. Four steps, and the first two are the ones candidates skip. Skipping them is what produces an answer about the author instead, so the first two steps are the ones to guard.

Four entries to close: three traps, each with a reason it attracts, and the handoff from the procedure units to poetry.

The author's views are not evidence.

AIL 0437 Trap: The Author's Known Views

A distractor may offer an attitude the author is known to have held. It is attractive because it feels informed. The question asks about this speaker in this passage, and outside knowledge is the wrong instrument even when the knowledge is correct. Being informed can mislead here, and the board knows it.

Charity is not evidence either.

AIL 0438 Trap: The Sympathetic Reading

Readers extend charity to a speaker in distress and choose the gentler option. The Duke invites it, and Browning refuses it. Ask what the words support rather than what the speaker would prefer you conclude, because the poem may be inviting judgment rather than pity. Some speakers invite a reading they do not earn.

The poem's verdict is not his mood.

AIL 0439 Trap: Attributing the Poem's Judgment to the Speaker

A poem may judge its speaker harshly while the speaker judges himself well. Options describing the poem's verdict, self-deluded or self-condemning, differ from options describing the speaker's own state, confident or aggrieved. Read which of the two the question asks for, and check whose state is being asked about.

Next: poetry, and how it sounds.

AIL 0440 What the Next Unit Does

The five procedure units are complete: question types, syntax, word sense, tone, and voice. The next unit begins genre craft with poetry, which carries the largest share of the exam, starting from sound, line and meter. The procedure does not change; the material it runs on does, and the procedure units end here.

That is the exam's use of the Duke, persona beyond Browning, the anchor's two ironies, the speaker-attitude question and its traps, with the governing idea paid off at the marker of a persona. You can name the options that would be live on the Duke, possessive but urbane among them, rule out remorseful and grief-stricken from his manner, read a long defence as testimony, and test any speaker by claims he cannot know, judgments that outrun his facts, and detail that undercuts him. You can read Swift's proposer and Donne's lover as personas, recognise a persona by the voice that never notices itself, and identify the listener who never replies. You can state the glossary's irony and the chapter's, follow the glossary because the chapter's version has no name for verbal irony, keep the chapter's reading of the Duchess, and call the poem's irony dramatic mainly and verbal in places. You can run speaker, listener, diction, options on the named object, and you know Sonnet forty-four serves two question types at once. And you can refuse the author's views, refuse charity, and read whose state the question asks for. The procedure units are complete; unit six begins poetry.