Rossetti Poetry context Flashcards
Haebus Corpus suspension Act 1817
Prevents Parliamentary appeal to the Crown’s imprisonment of treasonous subjects. Seen as doctorial.
Economic crisis
Taxes - Napoleonic wars
Arrest of booksellers
Trials and executions from Printing press boom leading to political debate.
Limit freedom.
Second wave of romanticism?
1790 - 1830
French Revolution:
1789 - 1799
Removal of aristocracy
Social classes
Industrial revolution
Middle class agitation for reform
Assult of a peaceful petitioners in St Peter’s Field
Manchester 1819
- Resented heavy handed aristocracy.
Romantic literature:
- Sublime emphasis
- Idealism
- Gothic
- Imagination
Christina and work?
She wanted to join Florence Nightingale as a Nurse in the Crimean War but was refused due to age.
- Her influence to work
Her childhood:
- As a middle-class daughter, she was taught self control. However, as a wild child this was difficult. Father’s nickname was ‘vivace’
- It was easier for her sister who was naturally restrained.
Rossetti’s mother?
- Frances
Intellectual excellence
Sing-Song - About a chicken who protects the chicks while the father takes on full financial responsibility for the household.
Religion:
- Anglo-Catholic faith of mother.
Breakdowns:
Dante described her as ‘a fountain sealed’.
She refers to this in the Bride of the Canticles.
‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.’
Rossetti’s father:
- Fell ill and the family fell into financial difficulty.
Egalitarian upbringing:
- Virgin martyrs
Religious mania
Diagnosed 1845
- ‘an awful certainty’ of the reality of hell.
- ‘unworthiness’
Rossetti’s death poem:
‘Memoranda for my Executor’
- ‘sleeping at last’
Rossetti and women’s suffrage
- Refused to support
Supports patriarchal doctrines, values and hierarchy of Christian orthodoxy. - Believed in female power.
Believed that there should be a woman MP.
Believed married women could be apart of suffrage.
Other literary poets?
Sigourney - Victorian cult of death.
Tonna - Devotional poetry
Child Custody Act 1839
Mother could be given custody of her children under 7
Factory Act 1844
Elizabeth Barrett ‘Cry of the Children’
When was Queens College London established for female education.
1848
When did Prince Albert die. Queen retires into mourning
1861
Louis Aime-Martin: The Education of Mothers of Families; or, The Civilisation of the Human Race by Women.
Critiques degradation of mothers.
Marriage provides a companion, Polygamy provides slaves.
- Link to Louise
- Link to GM
