Christina Rossetti's Faithful Imagination: The Devotional Poetry and Prose

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Christina Rossetti's Faithful Imagination: The Devotional Poetry and Prose

by Dinah Roe

4.00 · rating details · 1 rating · 1 review

This new study focuses on the critically neglected area of Rossetti's devotional poetry and her prose, offering a critical intervention in the feminist construction of an important Victorian woman poet.

Hardcover, 248 pages

Published January 23rd 2007 by Palgrave Macmillan (first published October 31st 2006)

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Aug 03, 2011

Todd Williams rated it

In Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination, Dinah Roe contributes significantly to the growing interest in Christina Rossetti’s theology and to the recent trend of examining Rossetti’s devotional work. Roe also takes up the largely neglected perspective of looking closely at the Bible as Rossetti’s primary literary influence. As her book’s title suggests, Roe seeks to reconcile Rossetti’s faith with her poetic imagination. Critics from Victorians, like Christina’s brother William Michael, t...moreIn Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination, Dinah Roe contributes significantly to the growing interest in Christina Rossetti’s theology and to the recent trend of examining Rossetti’s devotional work. Roe also takes up the largely neglected perspective of looking closely at the Bible as Rossetti’s primary literary influence. As her book’s title suggests, Roe seeks to reconcile Rossetti’s faith with her poetic imagination. Critics from Victorians, like Christina’s brother William Michael, to contemporary feminists, like Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979) and Germaine Greer (1995), have portrayed Rossetti the artist as being in conflict with Rossetti the devout Christian. Roe, however, seeks to break down this distinction between assertive poetry and reserved devotion by offering “a critical intervention in the feminist construction of Rossetti” and reminding readers that “making conflict into art is not a miserable act, but a redemptive one” (5). Throughout her book, Roe focuses on the redemptive capacity of Rossetti’s imagination that manifests itself in her devotional writings. Roe portrays Rossetti’s religion as a muse that stimulates, rather than detracts from, her literary creativity. Rossetti’s devotional writings do not depict passive renunciation, as feminists critics have often claimed, but active redemption.

Roe states that her primary purpose is “to demonstrate the effects of religious reading” on Rossetti’s work (2). Religious reading refers both to Rossetti’s reading of religious texts and her reading of non-religious texts through the lens of religion. Roe implements a methodology that focuses on the intertextual elements of Rossetti’s work. By examining Rossetti’s use of biblical and literary allusions, Roe demonstrates how Rossetti both reframes secular writers in Christian terms and contemplates and interprets Christianity through imagination. Roe explains, “In her devotional prose and poetry, Rossetti invites her reader to engage with a sophisticated network of biblical allusion, in which Christian doctrine is re-thought and sometimes re-forged” (7). Roe also looks at Rossetti’s reading of the Tractarians, Isaac Williams in particular. While Rossetti was capable of reading the Tractarians critically, as Lynda Palazzo (2002) has argued, Roe demonstrates the significant influence of Tractarianism on Rossetti’s writing and thought.

Roe’s exploration of Rossetti’s reading and its effects on her work points to a methodology that may be more broadly applied by future scholars. While Roe adds greatly to our understanding of Rossetti’s use of the Bible in particular, this aspect of her work cannot be exhausted in one book. Roe also adds to our understanding of Rossetti’s devotional prose, a seldom treated aspect of her work that requires more thorough consideration. In dealing with Rossetti’s religion as a source of inspiration and hope, Roe revises the image of Rossetti as a morbid artist oppressed by her beliefs. Roe convincingly shows that Rossetti’s faith not only provided her with a muse, but gave her work its hopeful and reconciliatory aspects.

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Aug 05, 2011

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About Dinah Roe

Born and raised in Upstate New York, Dinah Roe was educated at Vassar College. She is the author of Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination (2006). She has recently completed selecting, editing and introducing the Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti for Penguin Classics. She lives and works in London.

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