themes in the poetry of Christina Rossetti

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themes in the poetry of Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti is for me, a passionate and powerful poet; the majority of her poetry has contained the themes of either love or death, and in many cases both. Even within her children´s poetry, these themes are prominent. However, I feel it untruthful to call Christina Rossetti a sentimentalist poet, in my opinion she does not write nauseating sentimental ‘love´ poems. We shall see how Rossetti projects images of love which are more often then not either non-requited or, cut short, however, she also writes deeply and movingly of divine love. The other major theme within the poetry of Christina Rossetti is ‘death´ this theme is quite often in association with divine love. Again, she deals with this in a startlingly refreshing and compassionate way, often with the sense of melancholy but never with depression.

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Christina Rossetti did not just write for adult amusement, but also wrote poetry for children, and again the themes of Love and Death are featured frequently within these works. Rossetti manages to deal with both emotions in a matter-of-fact style, which a child would appreciate whilst remaining compassionate.

It will be necessary to briefly consider some of Christina Rossetti´s personal affairs to see how these have influenced her poetry. For example her love affairs; her dedication to the church; and her family, I will pay particular attention to her very prominent association with the Tractaraian or Oxford Movement and her ...

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