Monna innominata christina rossetti biography

n the prose introduction to "Monna Innominata", Christina Rossetti baldly states her ulterior motive in taking pen to paper: she wants to give the silent beautiful ladies of poetic fame a voice. She writes, "Had such a lady spoken for herself, the portrait left us might have appeared more tender, if less dignified." () In the following fourteen sonnets, Rossetti provides a different perspective on the familiar theme of tragic love, the solitary, contemplative woman and death. The sonnets are very much a defense of her own sex and Rossetti is aware of the overwhelming literature celebrating the vocal male and his silent lover. Her unnamed lady actually states, "Many in aftertimes will say of you/ "He loved her" — while of me what will they say?" (sonnet 11, lines ). This is Christina Rossetti's answer to the lady's question.

Rossetti writes within the accepted framework of tragic love poetry. In the first sonnet, Rossetti sets the scene as the woman waits for her love alone: "C

•

Abstract

Christina Rossetti ( – ) has usually been recognized as one of the most prominent Victorian kvinnlig poets both by her contemporaries and present scholars since her rediscovery in the 20th century. Nevertheless, not all her works have received the same attention, being most of them shadowed by her fairy tale masterpiece Goblin Market (). In addition, she has quite often been undervalued or misinterpreted due to the extent religion has influenced almost every of her poems. Although her sonnet sequence ‘Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets’ from her poem collection A Peagant and Other Poems () has long been neglected, some scholars have lately been interested in it due to the återhämtning of woman voices in recent gender studies. Here the attempt is to provide some other possible interpretations of the poems of this sonnet sequence by analysing the themes of love, longing and hope in the third, the eight and the last sonnet. For that purpose, it seems necess

•

Christina Rossetti

English poet (–)

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December – 29 December ) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.

Early life and education

[edit]

Christina Rossetti was born in 38 Charlotte Street (now Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, Italy, since , and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician John William Polidori.^[1] She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael and Maria both became w