The Poetry of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Same Femme, Different Fate

Siblings Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti both lived during the Victorian era and wrote poetry which epitomizes the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Although they were related, these two poets were drastically different, and their differences are evident in their poetry. Dante Gabriel was infatuated with beautiful women and many of his poems express sexual desire, while Christina was intensely devoted to God and many of her poems provide moral instruction. However, these poets both make femme fatales the subjects of their poems “Body’s Beauty,” “The Card-Dealer,” “The World,” and “Babylon the Great.” This paper analyzes the different ways in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti uses the image of a dangerous, eroticized woman to symbolize the threat that the power of female beauty poses to a man\u27s life, while Christina Rossetti uses this image to symbolize the threat that worldly desires pose to a person\u27s eternal life

The Tension Between Mysticism and Erotic Sensibility in Christina Rossetti\u27s Goblin Market

Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti\u27s best-known narrative poem, appeared in 1862 as the leading poem in Goblin Market and Other Poems, a volume designed to attract the Christmas trade. Since then, the few scholars who have ventured to regard Miss Rossetti as something more than Dante Gabriel\u27s sister have concerned themselves with varied and in-depth critical interpretations of Goblin Market. William Rossetti, brother and biographer of the poet, reports that he had often heard Christina say that she meant nothing profound by the fairy tale and that Goblin Market should not be taken as an apologue. Disregarding Christina Rossetti\u27s own comment, the critics seem to ·divide themselves into three distinct groups with each presenting a different critical approach to Goblin Market

Lucy Faulkner and the 'ghastly grin': Reworking the title page illustration to Goblin Market

An article that recovers the work of the craftswoman Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith. It demonstrates her role in the re-cutting of the title page illustration to Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’ designed by D. G. Rossetti in 1862-5

“‘To Take Were to Purloin’: Sexuality in the Narrative Poems by Christina Rossetti”

Christina Rossetti, sexuality, narrative poem

The Philosophy of Life Reflected in The Poetry of Emily Jane Bronte and Christina Georgina Rossetti

The writer of this thesis became interested in the poetry of Christina Georgina Rossetti through the study of The Blessed Damozel,” a poem by her brother Dante Gabriel. After receiving some helpful suggestions from her adviser, the writer decided to make a rather thorough and careful study of Miss Rossetti\u27s poems. In the meantime, the adviser, Dr. Myrta E. McGinnis, head of the English Department, selected Dr. Clarice Short as director and guide for the study. Dr. Clarice Short suggested that the writer make an additional study of the poetry of Emily Jane Bronte to ascertain likenesses and unlikenesses in the two poets, thereby making it a comparative study. After utilizing every available source in Forsyth Library to gain knowledge about the two poets and after a rapid reading of the poems of these two women, the writer decided upon making a comparative study of the religion or philosophy of life of Emily Jane Bronte and Christina Georgina Rossetti through the medium of their literary works. In pursuing this study, the author read practically all the poems of Emily Jane Bronte and Christina Georgina Rossetti. During a rapid reading of the poems, she selected for a more detailed and thorough study those poems of each poet which seemed to be pertinent to and illustrative of the proposed problem. As far as the writer could learn, there are not many graduate students who have written theses on these two poets. In consulting the lists of theses available in Forsyth Library, the author found that Miss Wilhelmina Rose Schreiner wrote a thesis in 1937 entitled : The Criticism of Emily Bronte, 11 and Miss Mary Louise McCluskey on Christina G. Rossetti: The Development of her Character and its Effect on her Poetry in 1941. Both of these studies were made at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1931, Miss Eleanor Walter Thomas wrote a doctoral dissertation: Christina Rossetti at Columbia University

Eve and the creation cycle: Christina Rossetti\u27s reaction to John Milton\u27s Paradise Lost

Christina Rossetti\u27s poetry is concerned with the image of woman as a creator and as a redeemer, the woman who has fallen from innocence and whose innocence is restored through participation in the creation/redemption cycle. Rossetti\u27s writing reflects her personal experiences, her love of Dante\u27s works, her interest in the Anglican sisterhood, her own Tractarian obsession, the influence of her association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and most specifically, her reaction to Milton\u27s depiction of Eve in Paradise Lost. She reconstructs Milton\u27s Eve in her own poetry. This treatise will examine a selection of poetry by Christina Rossetti, in specific her depiction of Eve, as a reaction to Milton\u27s Eve in his epic poem

Christina Rossetti\u27s \u3cem\u3eMaude: \u3c/em\u3eA Reconsideration

Christina Rossetti\u27s Maude: Prose and Verse, a short work written early in the poet\u27s career but not published until three years after her death, is usually considered from an autobiographical perspective, generally an unflattering one. Such an approach was early encouraged by William Michael Rossetti\u27s Prefatory Note to the first edition

British Poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century

A Selection for College Students, including Charlotte Smith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, and Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. Includes biographical sketches. doi 10.32873/unl.dc.zea.1096https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/1081/thumbnail.jp

Sing No Sad Songs for Me : A Study of the Influence of the Oxford Movement upon Christina Rossetti as Evidenced in Her Poetry

Christina Rossetti was largely influenced by the religious reformation known as the Oxford Movement; this study attempts to record that influence by discussing the etiology and the doctrines of the Movement in relationship to Christina\u27s life and her poetry. A cursory review of the topics of Miss Rossetti\u27s poetry, based on her work published in The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, is included, in addition to a more in-depth evaluation of selected poems. A partial biographical study is offered, which relies primarily upon William Rossetti\u27s Memoir to the Poetical Works and The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti. The significant studies of the Oxford Movement which were consulted are included in the bibliography of this thesis study. Christina Rossetti, one of the few outstanding women poets Britain has produced, was immensely influenced by the religious milieu of her home and her country. She was born on December 5, 1830, the youngest of the four Rossetti children, and was early indoctrinated with the teachings and practices of the Church of England by her mother, Frances Lavinia Polidori. Christina was educated at home by Mrs. Rossetti who taught Christina and her sister Maria from the Bible, St. Augustine, and Pilgrim\u27s Progress, and further reinforced this religious training by involving her daughters with the religious movement to which she transferred her loyalty from the evangelical branch of the Church: the Tractarian or Oxford Movement. July 14, 1833 is the date which is often regarded as the founding date for the Oxford Movement; on this day John Keble delivered the assize sermon National Apostasy which openly addressed the ominous trend of interference by the state with matters of the Church. The trend was started with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and intensified with Catholic emancipation; the introduction in Parliament of the Church Temporalities Bill and the resulting suppression of ten Irish bishoprics was interpreted by many of England\u27s religious leaders as apostasy on the part of the nation. Further, leaders at Oxford were demanding extensive reforms within the framework of the Church, for the training system of clergymen had grown lax and the salary system among clergymen was grossly uneven. The stand of the Oxford scholars inevitably came to focus upon content, doctrine, for they were essentially promoting higher ideas of the Church than the political and popular notion of it. As the Movement accelerated, so did the controversy surrounding it; indeed, it became part of the consciousness of the general public through repeated publication of the widely sold Tracts for The Times. It was these Tracts, edited by Oxford theologian John H. Newman, which earned the proponents of the Oxford Movement the name Tractarians. Christina Rossetti was early exposed to and inf luenced by this religious renaissance and this influence is evident in her poetry. Among the doctrines embraced by members of the Tractarian movement which are evident in the themes of the poetry of Christina Rossetti, as well as in accounts of her character and personality, are the beliefs of the severity of the moral life, the necessity for thorough self-examination, the need to be humble and to mistrust oneself, and the acceptance of illness and suffering as purifying communications from God. Christina\u27s earliest poetry evidences a preoccupation with death, a discomfiture with earthly existence. She fell in love twice, but due to religious reasons, she never married. Of Christina\u27s poetry, the sections called Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims, Some Feasts and Fasts, 11 Divers Worlds: Time and Eternity, New Jerusalem and its Citizens, Christ Our All in All, Out of the Deep I Have Called Unto Thee, O Lord, Gifts and Graces, and The World: Self-Destruction total 449 poems; eleven of the sixteen sections deal with religious concerns or a discussion of impending death. Of the section entitled Juvenilia, most of the 54 poems are religious in nature. That leaves 226 general poems to be considered, as well as 140 poems for children. Although a good many of the general poems discuss lighter topics, the number that are devoted to spiritual concepts and death are substantial. There is evidence from Christina\u27s correspondence, and from her poetry that she was an imaginative, dynamic, cheerful, and fun-loving person. However, her tendency to become discouraged and to doubt herself often overshadows the brighter side of her nature. Although she repeatedly doubted herself and her spiritual worthiness, her concept of faith closely paralleled that of Tractarianism and her faith in God never wavered. Her religion was often a comfort to her and this comfort is expressed in some of her best poetry. The tragedy of Christina\u27s life is that she was seemingly never able to fully accept the assurance she often expresses in her work and that, while trying to cope with the inner turmoil her perpetual doubts created, she was content to choose death over life. She died of cancer in 1894. Her poetic gifts, however great or small their potential, were used to express a great concern which no desire for poetic excellence or self recognition could ever overshadow--her intense longing for a new life in the world to come