E212: British Literature since 1760

D.G. and Christina Rossetti Study Questions

Al Drake. 520 Hum. T/Th. 7:30-8:30 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"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"

4. What is the speaker's state of mind during this lyric poem?

5. What insight are we to understand the speaker to have gained when he says simply that the woodspurge "hath a cup of three"?

6. Does this poem's treatment of nature seem "romantic" to you, or does it differ? Explain.

Christina Rossetti

"Song" (I)

1. What is the value of memory and hope in this poem? What changes have they wrought, if any, in this poem's speaker? From what force has the speaker been released?

2. How is this poem concerned with the limitations of expression? How are the speaker's emotions resolved or dealt with, if they in fact are dealt with?

"Song" (II)

3. What is the point of the speaker's projecting consciousness beyond death?

4. How are remembrance and forgetting similar in their effect?

5. Is Nature present in this poem? If so, what role does it play?

"After Death"

6. What perspective does this poem afford the speaker? In what sense does the speaker gain release from forces restricting her?

"In an Artist's Studio"

7. What reflections does this poem make about the way Pre-Raphaelite art represents women?

8. How is the woman referred to in Christina Rossetti's poem transformed from her ordinary self, and to what end?

"An Apple Gathering"

9. How is an apple gathering a metaphor of something larger -- namely a relationship? What does the poem imply about the staying power of love?

"Winter My Secret"

10. What is the benefit to be gained from keeping a secret? How does the speaker treat the imagined addressee in this poem?

11. What purpose do the references to the seasons serve?

12. How is this poem about expression and concealment? What sorts of expression are alluded to?

"No Thank You, John"

13. How does this poem construct an unattractively "male" perspective on male/female relations, and how does the female speaker counter that perspective?

14. How does this poem differentiate between friendship and love?

"Cardinal Newman"

15. To what extent does Christina Rossetti (or the speaker) identify with the passionate way Cardinal Newman lived his life?

"Sleeping at Last"

16. Compare this poem to earlier poems in which Christina Rossetti concerns herself with the subject of death. What has changed about her perspective?

Edition: Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2. Seventh edition. New York: Norton, 2000.