(DOWNLOAD) "Sonnet--Image--Intertext: Reading Rossetti's the Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Found (Critical Essay)" by Victorian Poetry # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Sonnet--Image--Intertext: Reading Rossetti's the Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Found (Critical Essay)
- Author : Victorian Poetry
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 218 KB
Description
In a letter to George Rae in 1873, Dante Gabriel Rossetti reflected on the practical difficulty of displaying his sonnets written to accompany his paintings: "An inscription is much more difficult to do properly than a picture. If it is a bit too large or too black the picture goes to the devil; and, if you have not someone to do it who has an elective affinity to commas and pauses, I will ask you to spare my poor sonnet." (1) Rossetti's brother William Michael reflects that the remark "shows in a rather amusing light the dislike with which .Rossetti regarded any clumsiness of subsidiary detail in connection with his pictures." (2) While somewhat flippant, the comment draws attention to Rossetti's very serious consideration of the formal composition of the sonnets he wrote to accompany many of his pictures. From his earliest work Rossetti reveals this preoccupation with the relationship between the sonnet form and his paintings-a relationship that may at times be directly manifest on the same canvas while at others it might be rendered more obliquely through allusion, imitation, or analogous form. What is provoking about Rossetti's engagement of both visual and verbal images to create meaning is the possible production of another kind of text, an intertext that is unique to the painter-poet. In 1849 Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin was the first painting exhibited bearing the initials PRB at the Free Exhibition at the Hyde Park Corner Gallery. (3) Rossetti wrote two sonnets for the painting which are now inscribed together at the bottom of the frame, both under the title "Mary's Girlhood (For a Picture)." (4) In the following year Rossetti produced another painting of the Virgin Mary, Ecce Ancilla Domini!, depicting the moment of the Annunciation. (5) Linked primarily through their subject matter, the paintings and the sonnets together provide an opportunity to develop a reading of the intertextual relationships at work in Rossetti's visual and verbal constructions.