Class Year

2018

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Fall 2017

Department 1

English

Abstract

Siblings Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti both lived during the Victorian era and wrote poetry which epitomizes the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Although they were related, these two poets were drastically different, and their differences are evident in their poetry. Dante Gabriel was infatuated with beautiful women and many of his poems express sexual desire, while Christina was intensely devoted to God and many of her poems provide moral instruction. However, these poets both make femme fatales the subjects of their poems “Body’s Beauty,” “The Card-Dealer,” “The World,” and “Babylon the Great.” This paper analyzes the different ways in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti uses the image of a dangerous, eroticized woman to symbolize the threat that the power of female beauty poses to a man's life, while Christina Rossetti uses this image to symbolize the threat that worldly desires pose to a person's eternal life.

Comments

Written for ENG 333: Victorian Aesthetics.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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