English Literature / Unit 14 ENL 1343 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Tennyson or Browning?
The idea
Tennyson and Browning are the two great Victorian poets, and the exam can ask which wrote a passage. First, listen to the music: Tennyson's lines are smooth, melodic and carefully patterned, as in the refrains of "The Lady of Shalott"; Browning's are rough, conversational, full of broken syntax and colloquial outbursts, as in "ah God, I know not!" Second, look at the subject: Tennyson favours Arthurian and classical legend, grief and doubt; Browning favours Renaissance Italy, painters, churchmen and murderers. Third, look at the voice: both wrote monologues, but Tennyson's speakers, like Ulysses, are often noble and elegiac, while Browning's reveal their own corruption. Fourth, check the form: the In Memoriam stanza rhyming ABBA points to Tennyson. Then name the poet with the evidence.
In practice
Music, subject, voice, form.
Where people slip
Both wrote dramatic monologues. Decide by sound and by whether the speaker exposes himself.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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