My Last Duchess Blog Post 1

My initial rankings put categories which dealt with the poem and its surroundings upon its inception, formulation, and its writing very highly, as opposed to modern influences dropping. Anything that helps with the complete understanding in the context of its writing found itself at the top of my list. Therefore, authorial intent, contemporary cultural context, etymology, understanding of elements, and the author's beliefs and personal values were highly regarded, while scholarly, modern, or personal contexts all found themselves dropping. Upon reading "My Last Duchess," my rankings found themselves very much the same, with the author's beliefs and values dropping slightly, in addition to a slight bump to scholarly context. The scholarly context just due to the fact that one like me might need it to fully understand the poem, and the author's beliefs and interests due to the fact that this particular poem said what it wanted to quite clearly, without respect to the author's upbringing and times. At this point, I feel I am an extrinsic analyzer, in that I want to take the full picture of the literature and its writing. I feel like I will be interested in intrinsic analysis, the New Critical introduction we were given was interesting to me, though I must just be interested in every area of analysis we are given.
Reader response criticism appeals to me in that I feel the way an author uses words to control the reader's emotions find me very interesting. Wordplay, etymology, and devices are all crucial in this, and all three of them are to me very important in full understanding of a text.