Different Kinds of Personality Essay Example for Free

Different Kinds of Personality Essay The Duke and Knight play crucial parts in the scenes and themes of both poems. They have very contrasting personalities to one another. The knight is very gullible and naive- in falling in love with a woman he knows is an evil and unreal person- though he can do nothing to prevent this. In a way, his personality would suit that of the Duchess, as she too is very nai ve. The Duke in that instance though is completely the opposite. He is very wealthy, manipulative and arrogant and is only interested in impressing people. This is shown throughout the whole poem, as he is obviously speaking to someone he feels is important about his wife and her murder. He even ends the poem by boasting about a bronze statue, of Neptune taming a sea horse cast by Claus of Innsbruck who was probably someone famous in those days. The two men are in quite similar situations though; having both just lost a love in failed relationships, though the loss of the Dukes love was deliberate. They are also members of the nobility, being a Duke and Knight. However, there is another difference between them and that is that the knight appreciated natural gifts and wasnt ruled by his status. The language and context of both poems contrast with each other too. La Belle Dame Sans Merci is written as a ballad. It is designed to be read aloud and to be easy on the ear. This particular ballad differs from others because it has been made to sound as if it had been written 200-300 years before John Keats was even born. It is also written in quatrain but in the pattern of ABCB and revolves around a question and answer. This poem is very ambivalent so it makes you think about what the poem means and contains endstopped punctuation to make a bigger impression upon the reader. My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue written in rhyming couplets although the endings dont always end with rhyming. The poem also contains run on lines with no particular punctuation at intervals, unlike in La Belle Dame. The background sources used by Keats and Browning are very unlike. There is a lot of history used in both poems. At the time Robert Browning wrote My last Duchess there was a large influence in Italy in particular over possessions and status. The story of the Borgias family who paid people to kill those they did not like or were not on friendly terms with, also gave him ideas. John Keats, though, was influenced by the thoughts and beliefs of people in 1795-1821. This was the time in which legends such as monsters and witches were at the centre of everyones minds. It was the idea of witches, which probably gave Keats the name of his poem. In those times, the word for witch was Bedlam which sounds like Belle Dame, so that could be significant. So, altogether there are many similarities and contrasts between La Belle Dame Sans Merci and My Last Duchess and both teach valuable lessons about life but also give insights into the lives and beliefs of some people in those times.