What is the main topic of the discussion? [br] What was Karen’s reaction to the

Listen to part of a discussion in a class on English literature. (P = Professor, K = Karen, T = Tom)
P: Everyone here? Okay, I hope that you all did the reading for this week. I know it’s midterm time, and you’re all busy, but Robert Browning is one of the most important poets in the history of English literature. He deserves all your attention. Actually, it’s usually not hard to sell Browning on my students, I find—his poetry really draws people in. Uh, so, what did you all think?
K: Well, you’re certainly right that it draws you in, but I have to say, it really confused me at first.
P: What was it that confused you?
K: Well, I mean, the poems we’ve read so far have been—it’s like, the poet is just kind of writing the poem. The poems we read by this Browning guy… it took me a few minutes to realize that he was using the voice of some historical character. It was supposed to be someone else speaking.
P: Sure. The reason I assigned this particular set of poems by Browning was that you could see what his most famous style was. He perfected a style called the dramatic monolog. And its major features are what you saw in the readings. It’s called dramatic because a poem of this type takes place at some sort of dramatic moment in the middle of a story. And a monolog is a long speech given by an individual, right? And so are these poems. You have Browning writing as if he were a different person, usually someone from history, speaking at length.
T: Professor, I kind of cheated and looked up information about Browning when I did the reading—I was like Karen; I was really confused at first. It seemed strange that this form of poetry, you know, the dramatic monolog, is so new. Browning only lived in the nineteenth century. Was he really the first person to develop a kind of poetry where he pretended to be someone from history giving a speech? It surprised me to read that.
P: Well, Tom, you see, the dramatic monolog is actually a more complex style of poetry than it might seem to be at first. For one thing, a lot of poems are addressed to the world in general, sort of; but a dramatic monolog isn’t. The speaker in a dramatic monolog is addressing a particular person involved in the story. So for example in the poem My Last Duchess, the duke is doing the speaking… and he’s specifically speaking to a servant of his future father-in-law. That’s important. A lot of the poem doesn’t make sense unless you bear in mind that he’s trying to give a message to the father of his new wife.
K: It took me a while to figure that out. And then, when I realized what was going on, it really crept me out. I mean, did I read it right? He seemed to be admitting…
P: Karen, why don’t we hold off on analyzing the poem too much for right now. I don’t want to shut you down, but I do want to stick to the general structure of the poems for a bit. I will say that when Karen talks about finding the poem a little spooky, part of that probably comes from the fact that… well, you figure, within the poem, the speaker is talking to someone in particular. So when you read the poem, you kind of take that person’s role—the role of the person being addressed. That’s one chief characteristic of the dramatic monolog. Now, obviously, the other thing Karen was probably unsettled by, in the case of My Last Duchess is that the duke doesn’t sound like a very nice character. We know that because of another key element of the dramatic monolog. What the speaker says is designed to make an argument—he’s trying to persuade the listener… and you, the reader, by extension… that what he did was right, or that his viewpoint is correct, or whatever. He makes a case, kind of like a lawyer with a judge or jury, and in the process he reveals his way of thinking, something of his psychology. And you have to decide whether you believe him.
T: It’s kind of hard because—I felt like a lot of the story was missing. The speaker in the poem only told his side of things, and you got the feeling that there had to be more going on, but it was all, just guesswork.
P: Now you see why I said the form was complex, huh? Sure. You have to fill in the back story yourself. And that’s the third big characteristic of a dramatic monolog. Now, with those things in mind, let’s look at the actual poems you read for this week.