Browning's "My Last Duchess": Paragon and Paregon Browning's "My Last Duchess": Paragon and Paregon There is here a problem of framing, of bordering and delimitation, whose analysis must be very. finely detailed if it wishes to ascertain the effects of fiction. ---Jacques Derrida, "Le facteur de la verite" If we are to approach a text, it must have an edge. ---Jacques Derrida, "Living On: Border Lines" The interaction of creativity with interpretation concerned Robert Browning …showed first 75 words of 5123 total…

…showed last 75 words of 5123 total…readers differ and defer because we are as susceptible as the count's envoy to qualifications or "just pretence" (50). Yet our visual and verbal imaginations depend less than his do on artifact and illocutionary pace. We have a license to redraw and revalue textual boundaries which are sharp yet approachable. To readers "on the dangerous edge of things" that Robert Browning treasures (Bishop Blougram's Apology 395), taming "My Last Duchess" only rarely is better than murdering it.