Summary
Summary Christina Rossetti, Historical Context
- Module
- Drama and poetry pre-1900
- Institution
- OCR
Historical Context during the period in which Christiana Rossetti wrote
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By: juliazelazo70 • 1 year ago
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Christina Rossetti: Christian Rossetti was born in 1830, she was the youngest child of a very gifted family.
Her farther, the Italian poet and political exile Gabriele Rossetti, immigrated to England
in1824 and established a career as a Dante scholar and teacher of Italian in London. He
married Frances Polidori in 1862 and they had for children, maria Francesca, Gabriel Charles
Dante, William Michael and Christina Georgina.
In 1831 Rossetti's father was appointed to the chair of Italian at the newly opened kings'
college. The children received their earliest education from their mother, who had trained as
a governess and was committed to cultivating intellectual intelligence in her family.
Christina became one of the Victorian age’s finest poet. She was the author of numerous
books of poetry.
Critical interest in Rossetti's poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a
resurgence largely impelled by the emergence of feminist criticism, much of this
commentary focuses of gender issues in her poetry and on Rossetti as a women poet.
Throughout Rossetti lifetime there was a constant debate between who was the better
female poet between herself and Elizabeth Browning, readers have generally considered
Rossetti's poems to be less intellectual, less political and less varied than browning’s. people
throughout time have acknowledged Rossetti as having a greater lyric gift, with her poetry
exploring perfect uses of diction, tone and form under the simplicity.
The Oxford movement
Reached London in 1840s, the Rossetti's shifted from an evangelical to Anglo-Catholic
orientation, this outlook influenced virtually all of Rossetti’s poetry. she was influenced by
the poetics of the oxford movement.
The ideas of the Oxford Movement were confined largely to the intellectual elite of Oxford
University which concerned itself hardly at all with the problems of industrial Britain. All
those involved in the movement agreed that the Anglican Church was in danger of final
spiritual decay because it had forgotten the doctrines of the apostolic succession, the
priesthood and the sacramental system. The Oxford Movement brought a new interest in
the Catholic Church but in 1850, when Pope Pius IX decided to abolish the long-standing
regime of apostolic vicariates in England and establish a regular diocesan hierarch..
The importance of Rossetti's faith for her life and art can hardly be overstated. More than
half of her poetic output is devotional.
The inconstancy of human love, the vanity of earthly pleasures, renunciation, individual
unworthiness, and the perfection of divine love are recurring themes in her poetry.
Goblin market be one of Rossetti's famous poems. It lusciously described fruits represent the
temptation of self- indulgence and pleasure. This genre, a narrative that combines fantasy
with moral allegory was important for Rossetti.
A morbid strain can be seen in many of her poems in the collection: themes of mortality,
inconstancy and corruptibility are prominent in her poems.
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