Studying Christina Rossetti

How to approach poetry:
Read the poem aloud.
Look up words/phrases you do not understand.
What is the poem about- (Literally and figuratively)
Language Analysis.
Context (her atttitudes towards what shes talking about)
Common links between poems.


Echo:
-Mourning a death/stillborn child?
-"Soft rounded cheeks" "Whose wakening should have been in paradise"
-Links to No,Thank you,John- being haunted by someone.

Remember:
-Talking to people she will leave behind after death.
-Rather be forgotten, than make people feel sad when mourning her death.

Song:
-Theme: death/how she is remembered.
-Telling people not to grieve for her.
-Acceptance of death.

From the Antique:
-Would rather be dead (or a man) than  a woman- women were oppressed.
-Theme: Feminsim and oppression in victorian era.
-Theme: After death rememberance.

A birthday:
-In love, more happy than other poems.
-Sensual.

Shut out:
-She has lost something.
-Garden is symbolic for someone/something.
-The "Garden" is re-growing but it's not as good as it was, "not so dear", "not the best"

RE-ACCURING THEMES THROUGHOUT ROSSETTI'S POEMS:
-Life after death- doesn't want people to mourn.
-Death- peoples' attitudes towards it- she was ill for much of her life, suffered a lot of bereavements in her lifetime, death was more common.
-Loss/Absence. -Not having someone/something- (Isolated) -Never married, never had children.
-Personal Identity:- female/gender identity. How it feels to be a woman and how she fits into society.
-How she would be considered after her death, as a poet.
-Emotional pain.
-Religion.
-Uses direct address, often to men. (Patriachal society)
-Natural imagery- influenced by the romantic poets.

Links to context:                


*Persona, narrator, voice (1st person) *
-Rossetti writes from the persepective of a persona, often biographical.

Christina Rossetti- Background. (Context)

19th Century poet, born in London in 1830 (Victorian era).
First had her poetry printed at 12 years old, then published poems under the name "Ellen Alleyen" at 19.
The women in her family were comitted High Church Anglicans and as a teenager, Christina suffered from a nervous breakdown that was diagnosed as 'religious mania'.
Rossetti fell in love with several suitors, but rejected them because they failed to share her precise religious convictions.
Rossetti devoted 10 years of her life as a volunteer at St.Mary's jospital for prostitutes and unmarried mothers.
Religious themesd dominate her work, but Rossetti never preaches. Instead, exploring the tensions between earthly passions and divine love.

No, Thank you, John notes:
We 'hear' some of his comments through reported speech.
One sided conversation.
Mechanical and cold view of younger Rossetti's love life.