In this episode, Jacke takes a look at her long narrative poem Goblin Market (1859-1862), about two sisters seduced by the fruits being sold by a pack of river goblins, which is one of the most sensationally bizarre poems Jacke has ever read. Even some of her greatest works, devotional poems and verses for children, strike us as just the kind of art a fine upstanding moralist might generate.īut there was more to Christina Rossetti than that-and in fact, she produced some of the most passionate and idiosyncratic poems of her era. How did literature develop? What forms has it taken? And what can we learn from engaging with these works today? Hosted by Jacke Wilson, an amateur scholar with a lifelong passion for literature, The History of Literature takes a fresh look at some of the most compelling examples of creative genius the world has ever known.Īs a devout and passionate religious observer, Victorian poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) lived a life that might seem, at first glance, as proper and tame. We know it today as literature, a term broad enough to encompass everything from ancient epic poetry to contemporary novels. Four thousand years ago they began writing down these stories, and a great flourishing of human achievement began. In a smart, ache, tingle,Lizzie went her way Knew not was it night or day Sprang up the bank, tore thro the.
It’s a long narrative poem about two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, and how Laura succumbs to temptation and tastes the fruit sold by the goblins of the poem’s title. William Michael Rossetti warned against a search for detailed symbolism, while accepting a general ethical significance for the poem: "I have more than once heard Christina aver that the poem has not any profound or ulterior meaning-it is just a fairy story yet one can discern that it implies at any rate this much-that to succumb to temptation makes one a victim to that same continuous temptation that the remedy does not always lie with oneself and that a stronger and more righteous will may prove of avail to restore one's lost estate" (Mackenzie Bell, Christina Rossetti, 207).For tens of thousands of years, human beings have been using fictional devices to shape their worlds and communicate with one another. ‘Goblin Market’ is probably the most famous poem Christina Rossetti (1830-94) wrote. The year after Christina Rossetti's death, "Goblin Market" was interpreted by James Ashcroft Noble as "a little spiritual drama of love's vicarious redemption, in which the child redeemer goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, that by her painful conquest she may succour and save the sister who has been vanquished and all but slain. R." (Maria Francesca Rossetti, Christina's sister).
1] First entitled "A Peep at the Goblins-To M.
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