Critical Reception

The Poetry of Christina Rossetti

In this course, Dr Ross Wilson (University of Cambridge) explores the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Having begun with a summary of Rossetti’s critical reception, both in her own lifetime and then after her death, we then explore Rossetti’s poetry through five key themes: repetition, repetition, expectation, ambiguity and uncertainty, and the speaker. Throughout the course, several of Rossetti’s poems are discussed in detail, including: ‘Goblin Market’, ‘Remember’, ‘An Old-World Thicket’, ‘Echo’, ‘Up-Hill’, ‘Song (When I Am Dead My Dearest)’, and many more.

Critical Reception

In this module, we think about Christina Rossetti’s critical reception, both in her own lifetime and in the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, we look at the critical appraisal of Sir Walter Raleigh (the Oxford professor, not the Elizabethan courtier), Virginia Woolf, Edmund Gosse, and Stuart Curran.