As discussed by Glennis Byron in
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5TKGnF2tU0C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=dramatic+monologue+is+in+disequilibrium&source=bl&ots=O9ZdGJTmit&sig=V_B8bhsb4_mlLOkLtPtjHKnx1c4&hl=en&ei=OISiTPywAcOB8gbKubGlAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=dramatic%20monologue%20is%20in%20disequilibrium&f=false">Dramatic
Monologue, Robert Langbaum in 1957 said "the meaning of the
dramatic monologue is in disequilibrium with what the speaker reveals and understands.
... we understand, if not more, at least something other than the speaker understands."
Byron explains that what this means is that the reader distinguishes two distinct
voices, the poetic speaker and the poet, thus creating a disequilibrium in the
monologue, which, since two voices are recognized, is not a monologue after all. The
poet can be recognized most readily in the poetic structure and in the
diction.
The poetic speaker is revealed in the narrative
s/he is involved in. In "Porphyria's Lover," the speaker reveals the doubts and
hesitations of love stolen in secret and the desperate lover's macabre solution. What
the speaker doesn't understand--understand in the sense that meta-fiction reveals poetic
self-consciousness--is that there is a larger structure from within which s/he speaks.
Yet the reader is fully aware of the larger structure, in fact, the reader is first
aware of the larger structure while being equally aware of the speaker and the speaker's
story.
For instance, in "Porphyria's Lover" the reader
knows about the poet through the iambic pentameter that has an a b a b
b etc. rhyme scheme with an ending couplet, while in diction, the poet
employs elision to pare words down for a fit with the meter (e.g., "o're" and "soil'd"
and "look'd"). In "Telephone Conversation" the poet's voice underlies the poetic
speaker's voice and is opened to the reader's knowledge also through structure and the
treatment of diction.
The structure is free verse with no
particular metrical pattern, but there is a cadence built from two contrasting accents
that don't match in individual cadence: (1) “Madam,” I warned, / “I hate a wasted
journey—I am African” in contrast with (2) "ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" There is no
traditional rhyme scheme but there is the repetition of vowel or consonant sounds at the
end of lines as in "rolled" and "foully" and "lived," "remained," "warned." As for
diction, specific words and phrases are in all capital letters, a stylistic choice that
directly announces the presence of a controlling poet behind the poetic speaker's
narrative.
Again, poetic structure and diction reveal a
voice in the dramatic monologue that is a voice other than the poetic speaker's voice
and that creates disequilibrium in which the reader knows what the speaker doesn't know
about the poet's poetic presence.
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