The short fiction readings are grouped according to narrative style with ancillary poetry readings chosen for either their narrative style or thematic relation to the stories. For each story or poem you read, please consider the following broad questions as a framework for your close reading. The individual guide questions provided for each story or poem will direct you to examine its more specific aspects.

• Why has the author chosen a particular narrative point of view?
  
• Why does the point of view suit the subject of the work?
  
• How can the reader differentiate between the narrator’s purpose and the author’s purpose?
  
• What role does irony play in each work?
  
• What literary elements and devices does the author use and to what effect?

In a Dramatic Monologue, the narrator is speaking aloud to another person (or persons), but the reader "overhears" only the speaker. The speaker has a particular reason for speaking, but because the speech is similar to a real converstaion, it is spontaneous and unrehearsed. It is up to the reader to infer from references made in the speech where the speaker is and to whom he/she is speaking.

The short stories, "The Lady's Maid" by Katherine Mansfield and "...& Answers" by Joyce Carol Oates and the poems, "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell and "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning are exampes of Dramatic Monologue. Observe as you read what literary techniques the authors use to indicate the interaction between the speakers and listeners in each story. Observe as well, how the use of Dramatic Monologue reveals character and allows the reader to distinguish between the speaker's purpose and the author's pupose.

Read and answer the questions about this poem as a contrast to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. Eliot makes several allusions to lines from "To His Coy Mistress" in his poem. What purpose do those allusions serve? How does the reading of Marvell's poem help the reader of Eliot's poem understand Prufrock's sexual insecurity and emotional paralysis? How does Prufrock compare to the narrator of "To His Coy Mistress"?

1. What is the speaker urging his sweetheart to do? Why is she being so "coy"?
   
   
2. Outline the speaker's argument in three sentences that begin with the words If, But, and Therefore. Is the argument valid?
   
   
3. Explain the appropriateness of "vegetable love." (11) What simile in the third section contrasts with it and how? What image in the third section contrasts with the distance between the Ganges and the Humber? Of what would the speaker be "complaining" by the Humber (7)?
   
   
4. Explain the figures in lines 22, 24, and 40 and their implications.
   
   
5. Explain the last two lines. For what is "sun" a metonymy?
   
   
6. Is this poem principally about love or about time? If the latter, what might making love represent? What philosophy is the poet advancing here?

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1. Who narrates the story?
   
   
2. To whom is the narrator speaking? Notice the narrator's diction and syntax. What is the effect of the use of dailogue within the dramatic monolgue?
   
   
3. What is the significance of the use of ellipses (three dots) throughout the story? What does the author's use of four dots at various places in the story stand for?
   
   
4. What purpose does Madame serve?
   
   
5. How does the author use irony to reveal the character of Ellen?
   
   
6. What is the tone of the story?

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1. What can the reader infer about the setting of the story and the person with whom the narrator is speaking?
   
   
2. What is "strange" about the account the narrator gives of her accident?
   
   
3. What does the narrator repeatedly assert about her life throughout the story? Why is she so insistent about this point?
   
   
4. What was the result of the test the narrator was given in school? What can the reader infer about the narrator's self-image from her reaction to the results? What lines support this inference?
   
   
5. What is the predominant emotion expressed in this story? How does this relate to the narrator's daughter?
   
   
6. How might the narrator's relationship with her father be significant to the events she describes in the story?
   
   
7. Describe the narrator's beliefs about the role of women in society and her feelings about relationships with men. What lines indicate these beliefs?
   
   
8. What did the narrator believe about her daughter's emotions and the quality of her daughter's life? Why might she have had these feelings?
   
   
9. Is the narrator credible when she says she's not depressed? Why or why not?
   
   
10. Explain the kind of irony that emerges in the reading of the story.

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1. Ferrara is in Itlay, and the time is during the Renaissance, probably the 16th century. To whom is the Duke speaking? What is the occasion? Are the Duke's rmarks about his last Duchess a digression, or do they have some relation to the business at hand?
   
   
2. Characterize the Duke as fully as possible. Pay close attention not only to what he says, but to his diction and syntax. How does the reader's characterization of the Duke differ from the Duke's characterization of himself? What kind of irony is this?
   
   
3. Why was the Duke so displeased with his last Duchess? What opinion does the reader get of the Duchess's personality, and how does it differ from the Duke's opinion?
   
   
4. What characteristics of the Italian Renaissance appear in the poem (marriage customs, social classes, art)? What is the Duke's attitude toward art? How does this relate to his attitude toward his last Duchess, and by extension, to any woman whom he would marry?
   
   
5. What happened to the Duchess? Should Browning have told the reader?