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E312: British Literature since 1760 Dante Gabriel Rossetti Study Questions Alfred J. Drake. Office: 424 University Hall Extra-Credit Journal Instructions: Respond to 3 questions at appropriate length. "The Blessed Damozel" 1. Why do the mortal lover's words appear in parentheses? How does he speak of the distance between the Damozel and himself? How does he represent her understanding of her temporal and spatial separation from him? 2. What relationship does the poem posit, in its presentation of the Damozel, between spirit and body, and between mysticism and eroticism? 3. What devices or strategies does the speaker employ to help us visualize the Damozel and interpret her words and actions? For example, where is the Damozel exactly, and how is she clothed -- what is the significance of objects such as "stars," "lilies," etc? What role does nature imagery play in this poem? "The Woodspurge" 1. What is the speaker's state of mind during this lyric poem? 2. What insight are we to understand the speaker to have gained when he says simply that the woodspurge "hath a cup of three"? 3. Does this poem's treatment of nature seem "romantic" to you, or does it differ? Explain. from The House of Life "The Sonnet" 1. How does this poem deal with the traditional theme of achieving immortality through verse? "Nuptial Sleep" 1. Why might this poem offend a Victorian reader's morals? What situation does it describe? "Silent Noon" 1. In what way is this poem "synaesthetic"? What is unusual about Rossetti's powers of description in this poem? 2. How might the poem's description of nature be called "Keatsian," if you are familiar with poems in which Keats describes natural settings? "Soul's Beauty" and "Body's Beauty" 1. How do the powers of Beauty differ in these two poems? "A Superscription" 1. What is this poem's subject? Who is speaking, and who is being addressed? "The One Hope" 1. What is the One Hope, and what good does it do? 2. Contrast the way "Hope" is described with the way the poem represents or images forth "Peace."
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