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Browning’s dramatic poem, “My Last Duchess” reveals to us the callous mind of Alfonso II, the duke of Ferrara.   The poem is based on the incidents in the life of Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara in Italy, whose wife, Lucrezia, a young woman died in 1561 after three years of marriage. Following her death, the duke negotiated through an agent to marry the niece of the court of Tyrol. Browning presented the duke as addressing this agent here. The poem includes such characters as Lucrezia; the duchess, Fra Pandolf; the artist, the niece of the court of Tyrol and the court agent. It was all about the death of Lucrezia whose demise was necessitated by the duke’s personal feelings to eliminate her. The event in the poem reveals the duke’s mind, his neurosis resulting from a long time repressed feelings for the duchess. This feeling was never a good type. He kept repressing the feeling, and suddenly became discharged after he had executed his wish, decapitating the duchess. Two factors ha...

The beauty of any work of art lies, not only on the language but also, on the excellent roles of the characters is achieving the purpose the writer intends at the time of writing. The need Ime Etuk has in this play text is to correct the social ill affecting the members of the society. To achieve this she chose excellent characters. All the characters played vital role towards the development of the play, but the exceptional roles of Mma Iko, Okon Itiat, cannot be underestimated. Both characters took parts in the formation of the government and also, they were the key players in the resolution of the government. Their roles in the development of the play are clearly understood by every members of the setting community as being central. Mma Iko, for instance, was a victim of the crown's sexual assault. She was denied the opportunity of becoming a royalty by her majesty who would prefer she is killed instead. Okon Itiat on the other hand was not favoured by the government of the day ...

Many literary pieces emerge showcasing the height of disappointment the writers have over the societies they painted in their works. The language of the works are always very explicit in the way they show how degraded the society looks in the author's eyes. This is their very purpose for which Ime Etuk wrote her play of "The Revolt of the Dogs". The novel dramatizes the exploitative tendencies of the political class at the expense of the masses. The play opens with the X-ray of the normal daily life of the inhabitants of Iko Ufen, setting of the play. Members of the community were in a restaurant enjoying themselves with palm wine when suddenly the town cryer arrived with a message from the clan head, summoning the villagers to a meeting at the village square with presents for the clan head. This has been the situation Everytime. The clan head and the attendant village heads have been milking the people dry. As the characters complained, the leaders have been "imposi...

Human characters are divers in nature and play out in the society continually to mark differences in among the people inhabiting a same society. To play these out in works of art, playwrights explore these divers characters to explicate the reality about any given society. The same, I suppose, is what Udom intends to achieve through the character, Regina, in the play text, Part-Time Lovers. One striking feature in the play is the love contest. Love issues dominate the play involving almost every character in the play text. The love issues show themselves obviously strong when the  clergy, who is supposed to face church works squarely, eventually become overtaken by it. Unfortunately, the love stories presented to audience turned our heartbreaking when they eventually became a show of anger, hate and betrayal, all the characters involved in love issues notwithstanding. Another issue presented to readers in the play is the unthinkable fight of the twins. The twins had a clash of love...

One relevant tool in literary appreciation is the apparent use of irony. One of the relevant usess of irony in literary discourse is that it helps the writer to create certain fancy that carries readers on, until he gets to where the assumed allusion is resolved. It gives readers the chances of creatively exploring their own mind in order to get the required undedstanding about the story in the work of art. The same, I suppose, is what Udom intends to achieve through the character, Regina, in the play text, Part-Time Lovers . The play began with different characters and continued till movement five before the playwright intentionally introduced the character, Regina. Although Regina was portrayed as a silent voice existing unnoticed to observe things, she was intentionally created to help in resolving the conflict ravaging the house of Reverend Benson over his unidentified twin boys. We experienced the emergence of Regina the moment Pamela's twins, Dele and Tunde were arrested by t...

China Achebe said that any writer who ignores to discuss issue in his contemporary society may likely end up being irrelevant. Moral decadence is dominant in our today society.   This degraded societal lifestyle is dramatized by Maurice Udo through the roles of Pamela, Cordelia, Rev. Benson and Mamboso which best describes them as part-time Lovers.  As the playwright rightly  chose the title of the play text,       love shows itself as the central theme of the play. Reverend Benson was found to be Pamela's lover in the past. The outcome of his love affair with Pamela was the troublesome twins, Dele and Tunde. Yet, Reverend Benson made possession of another woman whom he paraded before his church members as his wife. The call of nature finally brought Pamela to Benson following the insistence of the twin boys to know who their father is. To conceal this affection to Cordelia and the church, Reverend Benson has to claim that Pamela and her children ...

Literature is the true reflection of the society. At such, works of art are used to explicate the society with the primary intention to inform readers and thereafter initiates changes in the concerned society. That is one aspect of the healings which literature and other works of art bring to the society. I believe that this was the purpose Maurice Udom set out to achieve in this Playtex as she explores blind trust as central theme in the play. The play began with the popular domestic chores that characterized the early hours of the day inside Ette Idung's study room. Akpakpan was being  advised to clean the room for daily activities. Later on, the reader is made to know about an agreement document which Odudu was trying to amend. The document was about the proposed compensation by an oil company to Ette Idung's family over oil spillage. This was the base of the trust in every member of the family to become rich. As the central theme of the play, the playwright dramatized the g...

There are two clearly distinct meanings of the word chi in Igbo. The first is often translated as god, guardian angel, personal spirit, soul, spirit-double etc. the second meaning is day or daylight but it most commonly used for those transitional periods between day and night or night and day. Thus we speak of chi  ofufo meaning daybreak and chi  ojiji , nightfall. We also have the word mgbachi for that most potent hour of noon that splits the day in two, a time favoured in folklore by itinerant spirits and feared by children. I am chiefly concerned here with the first meaning of  chi , a concept so central in Igbo psychology and yet so elusive and enigmatic. The great variety of words and phrases which has been put forward at different times by different people as translations of this concept attests to its great complexity and lends additional force to the famous plea of Dr. J. B. Danquah that we pay one another’s gods the compliment of calling them by their proper nam...

  BOOK TITLE: Daughters Who Walk This Path AUTHOR: Yejide Kilanko GENRE:         Novel DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2012 PUBLISHER: Penguin Canada NUMBER OF PAGES: 323 pages  REVIEWER:   Oghenekaro Geraldine Ishiekwene (07038388901) Introduction Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters Who Walk This Path is an exciting but haunting novel which discusses the trials of women in the African society. It is set mainly in Ibadan, the hometown of the author, Kilanko, and the main character, Morayo. The novel is also set in Lagos and Anambra which have impacted on Morayo.  Story and the Content The novel portrays the 20th-century Nigeria which is characterized by superstitions and stereotypes. The writer shows us, the readers, the series of torture and mental traumas ‘daughters’ are made to go through. It shows the ways in which the girl child is abused and maltreated just because she is a girl. We are made to understand the adverse effects those abu...