ENGLISH POETRY XIX-XX
ROSSETTI BROTHERS, A REFERENCE
IN VICTORIAN POETRY
In poetry, talking about Rossetti is
talking about two of the most important poets in the Victorian Era, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti was one of the references of the 2nd period of the 19th
century and Cristina Rossetti was one of the most important poet women in
England.
First, let’s learn something about their lives and work, also
about their importance in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, then we will see their poetry through the analysis of two of their works.
“Gabriel Charles Dante
Rossetti, who later changed the order of his names to stress his kinship with
the great Italian poet, was born in London May 12, 1828, to Gabriele and
Frances (Polidori) Rossetti.
Dante attended
King's College School from 1837 to 1842, when he left to prepare for the Royal
Academy at F. S. Cary's Academy of Art. In 1846 he was accepted into the Royal
Academy but was there only a year before he became dissatisfied and left to
study under Ford Madox Brown. In 1848 he, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett
Millais began to call themselves the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. This group attracted other young painters, poets, and
critics; William Michael Rossetti acted as secretary and later historian for
the group.
In 1849 and 50
D.G.R. exhibited his first important paintings, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini (illustration). At about the same time he met Elizabeth Eleanor
Siddal, a milliner's assistant, who became a model for many of his paintings
and sketches. They were engaged in 1851 but did not marry until 1860, perhaps
because of her ill health, his financial difficulties, or a simple
unwillingness to undertake the commitment.
A commission to
cover the walls of the Oxford Debating Union with Arthurian murals introduced
Rossetti to William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and A.C. Swinburne in 1856 and 57. While there he also met index Burden,
with whom he fell in love, and introduced her to Morris, whom she married in
1859. After an engagement lasting nearly ten years, Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal
were married barely 20 months before she died from a self-administered overdose
of morphia on February 10, 1862. Although suicide was suspected, the coroner
generously decided that her death was accidental.
After her death
Rossetti moved to 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a large house
on the Thames which he shared with Swinburne and also (occasionally) his brother William Michael
Rossetti and George
Meredith . He continued painting and writing poetry, gaining patrons enough to
become relatively prosperous. Another of his models, Fanny Cornforth (who
appears in Bocca Baciata, The
Blue Bower, and Found ), became his mistress
and housekeeper, but because of her full-bodied blondness, never one of his
idealized women. That role was filled first by Lizzie Siddal; occasionally by
models like Ruth Herbert and Annie Miller; but most famously by Janey Morris.
Rossetti's choice of models and his idealization of them helped change the
concept of feminine beauty in the Victorian period to the tall, thin,
long-necked, long-haired stunners of frail health that we see in paintings like
Beata Beatrix, Pandora, Proserpine, La Pia, and La Donna della Finestra. The
persistence of the Pre-Raphaelite ideal shows up in photographs of William
Butler Yeats' idealized beauty, Maud Gonne. Jack Yeats, the father of the poet,
was connected with the Pre-Raphaelites, and Yeats himself said of his younger
days, "I was in all things Pre-Raphaelite." In 1871 Rossetti and
Morris leased Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, and Morris visited Iceland,
leaving Rossetti together with Jane and her children. Although biographers
still argue about what exactly went on among them, the triangle was in any case
a difficult situation for all concerned.
In the late '60s
Rossetti began to suffer from headaches and weakened eyesight, and began to
take chloral mixed with whiskey to cure insomnia. Chloral accentuated the
depression and paranoia latent in Rossetti's nature, and Robert Buchanan's
attack on Rossetti and Swinburne in "The Fleshly School of Poetry" (1871)
changed him completely. In the summer of 1872 he suffered a mental breakdown,
complete with hallucinations and accusing voices. He was taken to Scotland,
where he attempted suicide, but gradually recovered, and within a few months
was able to paint again. His health continued to deteriorate slowly (he was
still taking chloral), but did not much interfere with his work. He died of
kidney failure on April 9, 1882”. [1]
“Christina
Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets writing in
nineteen-century England was born in London and educated at home by her mother.
In the 1840s her family was stricken with severe financial difficulties due to
the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. When she was 14,
Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown which was followed by bouts of depression
and related illness. During this period she, her mother, and her sister became
seriously interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement that was part of the Church of England. This religious devotion played a major role in
Rossetti's personal life: in her late teens she became engaged to the painter James Collinson but this ended because he reverted to Catholicism; later she
became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley but did not marry him, also for religious reasons.
Rossetti began writing at age 7 but she was 31 before her
first work was published — Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862). The collection garnered
much critical praise and, according to Jan Marsh, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning's death two months later led to Rossetti being hailed as her natural
successor as 'female laureate'." The title poem from this book is
Rossetti's best known work and, although at first glance it may seem merely to
be a nursery rhyme about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, the poem is
multi-layered, challenging, and complex. Critics have interpreted the piece in
a variety of ways: seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation; a
commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency; and a work about erotic desire and social
redemption. Some readers have noted its likeness to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" given both poems' religious themes of temptation, sin and
redemption by vicarious suffering. Her Christmas poem "In the Bleak Midwinter" became widely known after her death when set as a Christmas carol
by Gustav
Holst as well as by other composers.
Rossetti continued to write and publish for the rest of her life
although she focused primarily on devotional writing and children's poetry. She
maintained a large circle of friends and for ten years volunteered at a home
for prostitutes. She was ambivalent about women's
suffrage but many scholars have
identified feminist themes in her poetry. Furthermore, as Marsh notes, "she was opposed
to war, slavery (in the American South), cruelty to animals (in the prevalent practice of
animal experimentation), the exploitation of girls in
under-age prostitution and all forms of military aggression."
In 1893 Rossetti developed cancer and Graves' disease then died the following year
due to the cancer on December 29, 1894”. [2]
As we have seen, both authors had to
be with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dante was one of its founders and
Christina was a “member” (her work shared the characteristics of the rest of
Raphalites but she never was an official member). I think it is important to
know something about this brotherhood, its origin, ideals, members, stages, and
the new features they brought to literature and art.
“The term Pre-Raphaelite, which refers to both art and
literature, is confusing because there were essentially two different and
almost opposed movements, the second of which grew out of the first. The term
itself originated in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an influential
group of mid-nineteenth-century avante garde painters associated with Ruskin who had great
effect upon British, American, and European art. Those poets who had some
connection with these artists and whose work presumably shares the
characteristics of their art include Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, George
Meredith, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was founded in 1849 by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), D.G. Rossetti, John Everett Millais
(1829-1896), William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and F. G. Stephens to revitalize the arts”.[3]
They were the reference in British
art and literature in the 2nd period of the 19th century.
They created the brotherhood to revitalize British art. Although they did not
published a manifesto, their main ideals could come from Ruskin’s praise of the
artist as prophet. Their main “new-revolutionaries” artistic ideals were:
- Testing and defying all conventions of art; for example,
if the Royal Academy schools taught art students to compose paintings with
(a) pyramidal groupings of figures, (b) one major source of light at one
side matched by a lesser one on the opposite, and (c) an emphasis on rich
shadow and tone at the expense of color, the PRB with brilliant perversity
painted bright-colored, evenly lit pictures that appeared almost flat.
- The PRB also emphasized precise, almost photographic
representation of even humble objects, particularly those in the immediate
foreground (which were traditionally left blurred or in shade) --thus
violating conventional views of both proper style and subject.
- Following Ruskin, they attempted to transform the
resultant hard-edge realism (created by 1 and 2) by combining it with typological symbolism. At their most successful,
the PRB produced a magic or symbolic realism, often using devices found in
the poetry of Tennyson and Browning.
- Believing that the arts were closely allied, the PRB
encouraged artists and writers to practice each other's art, though only
D.G. Rossetti did so with particular success.
- Looking for new subjects, they drew upon Shakespeare,
Keats, and Tennyson. [3]
This first stage of Pre-Raphaelitism had more influence on
visual arts, it was the second stage of the pre-Raphaelitism, headed by Dante
Gabriel, the one which was much more important on poetry and in literature in
general:
“The second form of Pre-Raphaelitism, which grows out of the first under
the direction of D.G. Rossetti, is Aesthetic
Pre-Raphaelitism, and it in turn produced the Arts
and Crafts Movement, modern functional design, and the Aesthetes and Decadents. Rossetti and
his follower Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) emphasized themes of eroticized
medievalism (or medievalized eroticism) and pictorial techniques that produced
moody atmosphere. This form of Pre-Raphaelitism has most relevance to poetry;
for although the earlier combination of a realistic style with elaborate
symbolism appears in a few poems, particularly those of the Rossettis, this
second stage finally had the most influence upon literature. All the poets
associated with Pre-Raphaelitism draw upon the poetic continuum that descends
from Spenser through Keats and Tennyson — one that
emphasizes lush vowel sounds, sensuous description, and subjective
psychological states.
Pre-Raphaelitism
in poetry had major influence upon the writers of the Decadence as well as upon
Gerard Manley Hopkins and W.B. Yeats,
both of whom were also influenced by Ruskin and visual Pre-Raphaelitism”.[3]
The realistic
style and the elaborate symbolism do not appear in a lot of poems but in the
Rossettis works. The main characteristics of the “new literature” were the lush
vowel sounds, sensuous description( so important in D.G. Rossetti’s work(the
medievalized eroticism)) and subjectivity.
Now that we know the lives of the Rossettis and their
artistic inner circle, we are going to see an example of their work: “The
Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel and “Song (When I am Dead)” by
Christina. Both poems have a lot in common and obviously many differences.
Let’s analyze them.
“The Blessed Damozel” is probably the
most important single work by Dante Rossetti. It was started in 1846 and was
revised and extended(the complete Double Work) until 1881. As a Double Work, it
combines text and image. We are going to analyze it as a whole.
The poem is a ballad, which meter is a sestet, iambic
that alternates trimester and tetrameter. The rhyme is a4-b3-c4-b3-d4-b3.
Dante started the written part in 1847 and the
pictorial work in 1871 and he finished in 1881. “As a “double work of art” it is unusual in DGR's corpus because the
poems preceded the pictorial treatments”.[4]
Usually, the works by Rossetti the paintings were done
first and the poems were written from the image. The picture work as an
inspiration. Not in this case.
The subject of the poem is the
“Dantean” topic of the man who dreams/thinks about his beloved woman, who
is dead. She looking at him from the paradise, admiring
him.
“In "The Blessed Damozel" Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustrates the gap
between heaven and earth. The damozel looks down from Heaven, yearning for her
lover that remains on earth. Through imagery Rossetti connects the heavenly
damozel to things of the earth, symbolizing her longing but emphasizing the
distance between the lovers. She stands on God's rampart, which is
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.”[5]
The man is on earth and he is thinking about her woman,
he maybe is dreaming or having a vision
where he admires his love: “The
foundational Rossettian subject of the emparadised woman is in this case
imagined as dreaming downward, as it were, to her lover who remains alive in
the world. This imagination of the damozel is here structured as the
“dream-vision” of the lover himself”.[4]
The poem has 144 verses, but, the most famous are the 24 first, that is,
the first four stanzas. They are included on the base of the frame, and tell us
the story about how they were separated by death. Here, the Damozel asks why
has she been separated from her love and why can she stay with him now. He is
seen as a prisoner on earth. Maybe he would prefer to die and meet with his
love again in heaven.
“The
first four stanzas of "The Blessed Damozel" are also written on the
base of the frame, which Rossetti designed."The Blessed Damozel"
tells the beautiful yet tragic tale of how two lovers are separated by the
death of the Damozel and how she wishes to enter paradise, but only with her
beloved by her side. Rossetti takes this theme of separated lovers that are to
be rejoined in heaven from Dante's Vita Nuova, a continual source of
inspiration. Rossetti divides the painting into two sections with a principal
canvas on top and a narrower predella canvas beneath — a style reminiscent of
Italian Renaissance altarpieces. The upper part shows the Damozel in Heaven,
leaning over the golden bar or "barrier," surrounded by angels and
flowers. She holds three lilies in her hands and stars encircle her flowing red
hair. She gazes longingly down towards her beloved, depicted on Earth with
grass and trees, in the lower predella. His hands are clasped above his head,
emphasizing his plea and his state as a prisoner on Earth. The painting
directly corresponds to the first verse of the poem”.[6]
The poem is divided in three points of view or levels:
The Damozel’s one, from Heaven; the lover’s, from his
dream vision and again the lover’s, but this time from his conscious
reflection, that is, from his thoughts. In the last case, the thoughts are
quoted by parentheses. Ex:
Had counted as ten years.
(To one, it is ten years of years.
. . . Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me — her hair
Fell all about my face. . . .
Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace.)[…]
Her voice was like the voice of the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's
song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
Possessed the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)
'I wish that he were come to me,[…]
Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.
(I saw her smile.) But soon their
path
Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)[7]
“The poem
operates at three levels, or from three points of vantage: the damozel's (from
heaven), the lover's (from his dream-vision), and the lover's (from his
conscious reflection). The last of these is signalled in the text by
parentheses, which enclose the lover's thoughts on the vision of his desire.
The pictures of
course have their own integral meanings, but they should also be seen as
“readings” of their precursive texts. The composite body of texts and images
makes up a closely integrated network of materials; it is a network, moreover,
that stands as an index of DGR's essential artistic ideals and practises”.[4]
Although the author makes a wall which separates
clearly earth from heaven and of course, the lovers, as we read the poem we
notice the author puts the lovers so near. She is described not as having “an ethereal beauty but as an earthly beauty”.
She is so earthly.
That is why he
remembers her as she was when died, she is in heaven but he has her in his
heart, and his heart is on earth. So she is in some way, on earth.
At the same time the author locates the heaven so far
from the earth, Dante uses the water imagery (which are so earthly) to connect
both worlds.
“Though
distanced so far from the earth, her hair is "yellow like ripe corn."
Rather than declare her ethereal beauty, Rossetti depicts the damozel's
appearance through earthly detail. She may be far from her lover and fixed in
Heaven, but her appearance and her gaze, like her heart, is grounded with her
beloved on earth. Even Rossetti's description of the space between the two
lovers is an attempt to unite Heaven and earth. He calls the ether a
"flood" and the rampart above the ether a "bridge," both
images of inherently earthly qualities — water and the manmade construction
that crosses it. The passing of day and night belows her are "tides"
tinged by flame and darkness. The earth is so far from heaven it looks
"like a fretful midge" — small, agitated, and a sharp contrast to the
peaceful stillness of Heaven”.[5]
The water imagery is used to connect them, but also to
separate them, it is ironic. The deep of
her eyes reflects the space there is between both. “This
picture of the space separating the lovers mirrors Rossetti's description of
the damozel's eyes. Just as the ether is a flood, her eyes "were deeper
than the depth of waters stilled at even." The damozel sees only the
distance from her beloved, and through most of the stanzas, she prays for and
imagines their union together, rather than immersing herself in Heaven. Heaven
is fixed, while the earth spins fretfully, and in an ironic twist, the
damozel's gaze is fixed upon the earth. Rossetti creates a poignant sense of
her longing by depicting her gaze and her heavenly position through earthly
images, and in effect, he gives the reader a glimpse of the heavens from the
damozel's unreachable position”.[5]
It is so important the Dantean inspiration that Rossetti uses in this Double
Work. Its parallelism with Dante and Beatrice is clear. The poem centers in The Vita Nuova.
The parallelism is obvious, Beatrice (the blessed Damozel) is the
emparadised lover and Dante (lover) is
on earth, he can reach her. “The
principal source is generally Dantean, and especially the material that centers
in the Vita Nuova . The most
revealing passage is probably the famous canzone “Donne ch'avete intelletto
d'amore” which comes in section XIX.
The canzone treats the position that Beatrice, the emparadised beloved, has in
relation both to mortal creatures, including Dante, and the beings of heaven,
including God”[4].
The other parallelism we can relate this poem to is an autobiographical
one. As we have read in the biography, he married to Elizabeth Siddal in 1860
and she died in 1862. He included or transported her image to the poem’s
Damozel.
“Begun as a stil novist exercise, the poem later
assumed a distinct autobiographical dimension as the figure of the damozel
opened itself to parallels with Elizabeth Siddal whom he met in 1849 and
married in 1860. Her death in February 1862 translated her to the heaven
figured in Rossetti's poem. Devoted as he was to her, or at any rate to his
image of her, Rossetti became haunted by her ghostly presence—a haunting all
the more powerful because of Rossetti's remorse over his infidelities to Siddal
before and during their marriage”.[4]
Finally I would like to praise this poem as one of the most important of
the Victorian Era, because of its wonderful combination between a beautiful
text and a splendid fogg oil painting that makes this piece of work a reference
inside the Victorian Era and in the British art, as a representation of the
revolutionary Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists.
Now, we will analyse the poem “Song”, by Christina Rossetti and will
look for the connection with her brother’s work.
“Many such painterly and literary
works clearly embody male vantage points. Many such poems are actually spoken
by male characters throughout (as in "The Blessed Damozel" and "Porphyria's Lover"), or end with male voices
(as in "The Lady of Shalott"). Christina Rossetti offers the rare
example of a Victorian woman poet who talks back. She does so in several poems
the nature of whose speakers suggest how difficult, almost impossible, that act
is: her female speakers are dead and their voices come from beyond the
grave”.[8]
As G.P. Landow says, Christina Rossetti was a unique poet and her works
are unique. In “Song”, Rossetti creates
a new character, “a dead woman who talks
back”, a woman who speaks from the grave and who is going to be listened,
heard for the first time. The prototypic male point of view of these poems is
now changed to the side of the women, that dead women who is admired by the man
but who has never had the chance to speak.
“Christina Rossetti is one of the
few poets, male or female, who creates such unusual poetic
characters[…]Rossetti's dead speakers concentrate more narrowly upon offering a
woman's view of male conceptions of romantic love and loss. "After
Death," which we may pair with "Song," another poem dating from
around 1862, presents what seems to be a conventional view of pure, sacrificial
womanly love. In this brief poem, the speaker, whom we gradually realize is
dead, seems to embody the standard self-pitying adolescent fantasy expressed in
the words, "they'll miss me when I'm gone (sob)": Here a man whom the
female speaker loves but who did not see her worthy of love while she was alive
at least notices her now she's dead”.[8]
The female speaker of the poem “comes” to say all that she could not say
when she was alive. She suffered a lot by her feelings of loss for her lover, she feels as if never had
been really loved. Now she is dead, she does not seem sad or hurt, she seems to
be in peace. She does not want to remembered as in the typical Victorian poems,
as a beautiful and forever beloved woman. She doesn’t need this. That was so
radical and so new in the Victorian Era. She does not need to be loved, to be
praised now she is dead, she want to be loved when she was alive, when she
could share her life with her love:
“Sentimentalized depictions of the
tragic death of women occupied many PRB poems and paintings. The
familiar stories of Mariana and The Lady of Shalott make women into objects,
manipulated and toyed with. They place women at the mercy of the men in their
lives. These works come from a male vantage point. Christina Rossetti provides
a unique rebuttal to these works in her poem, "Song". Here, Rossetti
voices the inner thoughts of a dead Victorian woman. As though in response to
her brother's poem, "The Blessed Damozel" (text) in which a woman, tortured by
her feelings of loss for her lover, stirs in heaven, Christina Rossetti's woman
in "Song" feels no pain or loss, but rather only peace. Christina
Rossetti paints a picture of heaven devoid of human earthly desire, in fact
characterized by ambivalence. Her woman does not pine for her lover; she states
that she might actually forget him altogether in time. Rossetti's woman, not at
the mercy of her lover, finds herself free of desire for him. She has moved
onto another part of her life. Although her poems centred on the depiction of
love, Rossetti's love translates from earthly passion to a peaceful, higher
spirituality and comfort upon death. "Song", exposes the inadequacy
of earthly love when compared with the peace and fulfilment experienced by the
woman upon death”. [9]
This fact, this change in the vantage point takes to pieces the male
tradition in this elegiac poems, where the women were more an object to be
admire, an inspiration than a person:
“The note of complete
indifference on which Christina Rossetti ends this poem is particularly
shocking when seen in the context of male tradition. Rossetti’s speaker here does
not pine for her male partner to join her; indeed, she suggests that she has
increasing difficulty in remembering him at all — and that's not a matter of
serious concern or regret. The poet's wordplay increases the effect, for much
depends on "haply," which might mean "possibly" or even
serve as a poetic version of "happily." The first meaning of the word
is harsh enough because it conveys the speaker's increasing indifference, the
second her pleasure in such forgetfulness. Either way a new female voice
reconfigures the poetic tradition”.[8]
shall
not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Here, Christina changes the role of woman and seems to locate herself
against her brother (his Italian male poetic tradition and role of women), she
changes these common use of objectified women:
“In "Song," Christina Rossetti
is both working through and against the Italian male poetic tradition so
important to her brother. The female speaker in "Song" does what
Dante Gabriel's idealized and objectified woman in "The Blessed Damozel" is never able to do. As George P.
Landow discusses in "The Dead Woman Talks
Back: Christina
Rossetti's Ironic Intonation of the Dead Fair Maiden," the dead woman
literally addresses her beloved from the grave and for once is allowed to
"talk back" and be heard. The obvious impossibility of this situation
occurring under normal circumstances suggests the extent to which the female
voice was suppressed in society. As Landow points out, the speaker's
unwillingness to let her beloved grieve over her absence is reminiscent of
Dante Gabriel's notion of the selfless female”[10]:
When I am dead, my
dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me. . .
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I think the aspect that stands out in this poem is the sensation of indifference that the speaker seems to
show toward her lover:
“What initially appears to be a
typical self-sacrificing female speaker turns out to be a complete rejection of
this Victorian stereotype. In contrast to Dante Gabriel's poem "The
Blessed Damozel" in which the male speaker imagines his dead beloved
desperately longing for him in heaven, the female speaker in Christina
Rossetti's "Song" has an attitude of total indifference to the male
figure”.
The point of view focused in a female speaker, was used in “Song” and
other poems as “After Death”. This female speaker shows the indifference we
have talked about, the peace she feels and how she moves away from her lover.
Also why she is now so indifferent. She is so indifferent because she suffered a lot by her feelings of loss for her lover, as we see in “After
Death”:
AFTER DEATH
The curtains were half drawn; the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where, through the lattice, ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
"Poor child, poor child"; and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise
the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.
Christina Rossetti was not only one of the most important female poets
of the British history but also a reference for all the writers in Britain, as
she brought new features and a new way to use the classic Italian male poetic
tradition which was the reference for the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and of
course for his brother. By writing poems as “Song” or “After Death” she changed
the stereotypes of Victorian poetry and
contributed together with her brother and other authors and members of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the
creation of a modern view in arts.
Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti were two references in the
Victorian Era, they helped the evolution of poetry and art in general in
Britain. Dante leaded the Pre-Raphaelites, created wonderful Double Works which
changed the way of doing poetry. Christina Rossetti was the most important poet
woman since Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and was of the most important of all
time. She was a reference not only for poet women but also for male authors.
They are two of the most important Victorian artists by far.
NOTES:
[1] from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Biography; Victorian Web,1988http://victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/dgrseti13.html
[2]from Wikipedia, Christina Rossetti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti
[3]from Pre-Raphaelites: An Introduction, by George P. Landau, Victorian
Web http://victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html
[4] from The Blessed Damozel, DG Rossetti, General description, www.Rossetiarchive.org) http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/1-1847.s244.raw.html
[5] from “Parallel Imagery in The Blessed
Damozel”, Adrienne Johnson’05 English History of Art. Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes, and Decadents, Brown University, 2004. Victorian Web. http://victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/johnson5.htm
[6] from The Spiritual Depths of the Feminine Soul in Rossetti's
"The Blessed Damozel". Hae-in Kim, English/History of Art 151, Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes, and Decadents, Brown University, 2004. Victorian Web. http://victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/hikim5.html
[7] “The
Blessed Damozel”1847-1881, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from Representative
Poetry Online. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1763.html
[8] from The Dead
Woman Talks Back: Christina Rossetti's Ironic Intonation of the Dead Fair
Maiden George P. Landow, Shaw
Professor of English and Digital Culture, National University of Singapore. http://victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/gpl1.html
[9] from A Woman's
Voice in Rossetti's "Song". Meaghan Kelly '05.5, English/History of
Art 151, Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes, and Decadents, Brown University, 2004. Victorian Web. http://victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/kelly6.html
[10] from Representations of the Female Voice in Victorian Poetry.
Breanna Byecroft '05, English 151, Brown University, Autumn 2003. http://victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/byecroft14.html#damozel
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Christina_Rossetti_2.jpg
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti
[13] http://www.wordreference.com