Discuss “the Duchess of Malfi” as a Revenge Tragedy.

The poem “My Last Duchess” is a historical event that involves the Duke of Ferrara and Alfonso who lived in the 16th century. Robert Browning "My Last Duchess" presents a narrative about a recently widowed Duke who talks with an emissary had come to an arranged marriage with another lady from a powerful and wealthy family. In the perspective of Duke, power and wealth were integral in marriage and was determined to be married to a wealthy lady from a famous family. As the Duke orients the emissary through the palace, he stops and shows a portrait of the late Duchess who was a lovely and young girl. The Duke then begins by stating information about the picture and then to the Duchess. Duke claims that the Duchess flirted with everyone and did not appreciate the history of the family: “gift of a nine hundred years old name.”(33) However, when an individual continues to read the poem, it is evident that the Duke played an important role in killing the lady. Duke states that “he gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together”(45-46) he used these words to define the death of his beloved Duchess. The aim of the essay is to analyze literary devices that emphasize the content of the poem, which includes rhetorical questions, exclamation mark, and em dash.

Eventually, the crime begins to wear down Lady Macbeth and she slowly begins to lose her mind. Feelings of guilt and paranoia flood her thoughts even when she is asleep. Lady Macbeth is last seen sleepwalking through the castle and shouting nonsense. “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!--One: two: why, then, ‘tis time to do’t.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him” (Act V sc. i liness 39-44). Here the readers see how bad Lady Macbeth’s mental state has become as she tries to wash away an invisible stain of Duncan’s blood from her hands. By the end of the play, Lady Macbeth has confessed her role in the murder and she dies. “Of this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen, Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life…” (Act V sc. viii lines 69-71). From this quote, the readers learn that Lady Macbeth committed suicide, the guilt of the crime became her greatest weakness and she could no longer cope with the secret she had kept hidden. Lady Macbeth’s actions at the end of the play are quite ironic. In Act I, she was seen as strong and ruthless, but after Duncan is dead, she is the one who breaks down and becomes overwhelmed with remorse. Lady Macbeth was so blinded by her dreams of becoming queen

The admiration of courtly love is no more prevalent theme in Marie's lais than on “Yonec” and “Lanval”. These two lais are showing very aristocratic views on socially states; love of nobility. A love that cannot be explained by a commoner or peasant that cannot show status has nothing to offer, for courtly love because a peasant has no chivalry. This courtly love is often secret in that a knight and a lady are not married to one another but to a different partner making the story adulterous. That secret at the end makes the story ecstatic and tragic; the adhesive of the story is the passion of love that is displayed making the store ecstatic and the secret is the tragedy that love cannot be acknowledged. The principal argument of this essay is to understand courtly love in Marie de France’s lais.

Thus, Shakespeare’s play Hamlet uses both themes of revenge and tragedy, as they are both used in the main parts of the story. It is up to the reader if he or she wants to interpret this story as a tragedy or revenge, but it is most probably a mix between the two. Hamlet was, and is still a titanic part of our culture, and literary history, and will most likely still be analyzed in the future for its rich, and convoluted plot. Hamlet is a unique piece of literature, and will be regarded for a long time as one of the treasures of English

Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth figuratively try to wash away the guilt. “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (5.1.53-54). Lady Macbeth believes she cannot get rid of the smell of blood on her hands even with the strongest perfumes from Arabia. Over time Lady Macbeth becomes mentally unstable and it is shown in her altered state of sleepwalking. Ultimately guilt leads to the demise of Lady Macbeth.

In the end the dearest Lady Macbeth ends up with a whole pile of guilt on her shoulders. After her ambition to help Macbeth gain the crown goes a little to she tries to stop him from killing again, but now he is the one who will kill to keep it. “Nought’s had, all’s spent/ where our desire is got without content.” (3.2.6-9) Lady Macbeth isn’t happy anymore. She realizes that the blood that she has seen will never go away. Regretting the decisions she has made can be seen because she doesn’t want the guilt hanging over her. She decides to end it herself by committing

In this world, there are many things that men may possibly never understand. Time travel… gravity transcendence… and over everything, women, to name a few. In Dickens’ novel, we see just how complex (and simple) women can be. In this paper I will be defending J.F. Hamilton’s “Of Weaving and Knitting”.

In Thomas Malory 's Morte Darthur the tale of Launcelot and Guinevere’s betrayal and the tragedy that ensues is the prevailing end of the arthurian legend. Malory writing as a prisoner accused of treason took vested interest in the betrayal of Arthur by Guinevere and one of his most popular knights. Most likely due to the fact that Malory saw himself and hope for mercy in the character Launcelot and made that evident in the story he wrote.Ultimately Malory wrote the Morte to absolve himself of wrongdoing, but it is also rife of subtle criticisms of royalty. Specifically their incompetence, lust for power and abuse of it, and how the fighting class, the one Malory belongs too pays the

Thus the Duchess is bound to the Duke and has become imprisoned within his art collection as nothing more than a possession. The Duke exemplifies this view when he makes reference to another piece of his art collection, as if the current and previous subjects of his monologue were completely analogous, “Notice Neptune, though/ Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity/ Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! (Browning 54-56), he truly appreciates both pieces with similar enthusiasm. Although the Duchess is allocated no space to give her side of the story, through the Duke’s depiction the reader can infer that she was killed for having her own free will and as such there is zero doubt that she is a victim of imprisonment of the Duke’s egocentric ideals. While he puts an adulterous spin on her actions, by declaring:

With her terribly manipulative mind-set, she was able to have some control over Macbeth with her cunning sayings such as: "when you durst it, then you were a man". This led to Macbeth killing the king, unwillingly, to prove himself. Furthermore, she was a main player in the downfall of Macbeth and of Scotland, which started right after she assisted Macbeth with murdering the king. Afterwards, she realized what she had done and she was "...[in] shame to wear a heart so white", (Document C), while her hands were dripping with blood. Unfortunately, her realization of the downfall she helped create caused guilt to completely overwhelm her, and it led to her committing suicide.

The idea of courtly love and its shift are discussed in great detail. In her work, courtly love is a concept of love freely exchanged between members of the aristocracy. It was loosed based on the concept of vassalage “…the military relation of knight to lord, distinguished itself (in its early days) by being freely entered into” (Kelly-Gadol 178). The concept of courtly love derived from feudalism, according to the article. Courtly love gave women power over their bodies and over whom they loved regardless of whom they married.

Lady Macbeth, in sharp contrast to her early role as the guiltless instigator, takes a backseat to Macbeth’s own brutal inclinations and eventually feels the most guilt over the murder in the latter section of the play. Eventually, accentuating the evolution of the plot to take power from her idea to Macbeth’s mess, she commits suicide over the guilt and madness caused by her murders. Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene is key in her transformation from the ambitious instigator towards becoming suicidal over her guilt. While sleepwalking, she unconsciously attempts to wash her hands of the blood from the murder and therefore reveals her deep-seated feelings of guilt to her servants and to the audience. Lady Macbeth’s unconscious question of “will these hands ne’er be clean?”

Lady Macbeth eventually killed herself because she could not live with the sins of all the innocent lives that were lost because of her and her husband. Guilt is a crippling emotion, and it is key in the deterioration of Macbeth and Lady

He gives her a recount of his interaction with the witches, and immediately, the audience is shown a glimpse of Lady Macbeth’s sadistic side. While a majority of people would be taken aback (at the bare minimum), this woman seems to jump at the chance to improve her social status. Her black heart, as well as her greed, come to the surface as she reads her husband’s words, “'Thus thou must do, if thou have it; and that which rather thou dost fear to do than wishest should be undone (Act I, Scene 5).’” A significant amount of women in that time period would have recoiled at the thought of murdering someone to improve their own social status. Lady Macbeth, however, welcomes the opportunity. She gives an entire soliloquy about having the strength to commit a crime, stating, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty; make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse; that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances; you wait on nature's mischief (Act I, Scene 5)!” Lady Macbeth does not fit in at all with women in the sixteenth-century in that she is capable of behaving incredibly

Though the prioress is a religious figure who is suppose to be practicing moderation, piousness, and charity, she is instead refining behavior that is expected of the courts, which is unnecessary in religious institutions. The extensive description of her elegant attire and courtly manners paints a portrait of excessive pompousness and arrogance. The extravagance of the nun’s clothes also shows that rather than living in humble poverty, the nun is living a lavish life, which portrays her in a corrupt light because she does not abide by the teachings of the convent. The nun further demeans religious codes through her obsession with worldliness. The nun’s boundless love for her dogs, and the tears that she sheds for animals demean the respect and love that she should be directing towards God because she shows that she loves the material more than she does anything else. Her brooch that reads “Amor vincit omnia” (162) is a display of her affection towards worldly material items because her love is imprinted on her brooch instead of being expressed through her actions. The nun’s focus on worldly items reflects the corruption that was overtaking religious institutions as more individuals within it began to incorporate the ambitions and ideals of aristocracy into their religious practices.