1/3/2024 0 Comments Definition dramatic monologueEspecially for those students whose impulse is to try to communicate too directly-to make bald, flat statements of meaning-the dramatic monologue can be a toe first dipped into richer waters.īut not only does the dramatic monologue occasion strong student poems, the exploration of the form can also provide a platform for a wider discussion of the art. It is intuitive, user-friendly figurative thinking. When I speak as Jonah inside the whale, I may well be spinning out a comparison of some aspect of myself, my own condition, with Jonah and his. In a dramatic monologue, the voice itself often functions as an extended metaphor. The dramatic monologue can provide training wheels for this kind of layered writing. One way to tackle the task of indirection, to give “crookedness” to your walking stick, is to write on two levels: a literal one and a figurative one. The business of making meaning in poems must be approached obliquely it requires indirection, what Frost called “the straight crookedness of a good walking stick.” Few poets have the eloquence necessary to charge in with a direct statement of meaning and still create a rich, involving experience for the reader. In addition, the dramatic monologue form is a way for students to begin an exploration of extended metaphorical thinking. He’s already a figure in our imaginations. When Superman speaks the poem, the reader immediately has a way in: Superman is the reader’s character, too. Individual concerns instantly broaden in the mouths of characters that belong as much to reader as to poet. The dramatic monologue offers a solution in its use of shared cultural stories. This is hard for new writers, and it’s not so easy for their professors, either. One of the challenges of writing a poem is giving our personal concerns wider application: involving, even implicating others in our experiences. The dramatic monologue also provides a kind of amplitude. Freed from these contexts, then, student work can find greater resonance. In other words, the power of the poem can be diminished by its biographical detail. And with undergraduate writers, especially, the emotion in a poem can be more powerful than the circumstances that give rise to it: for example, the context of dorm life. Freed from the constraints of the biographical, students can find great resource in their imaginations. The dramatic monologue form frees us from the constraints of the biographical-it forces that freedom-and in return requires us to evoke a new biography. I love teaching the form because some of my favorite poems are monologues-and because it often occasions breakthroughs in student writing. I love teaching the dramatic monologue, those poems in which the speaker is understood as a character distinct from the person of the poet. How to Put Words in Someone’s Mouth: Teaching the Dramatic Monologue
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