Christina Rossetti

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. Rossetti was born into an artistic family and her siblings included Dante Gabriel, one of the leading lights of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to whose journal, 'The Germ', Christina contributed poems. She was a devout Anglican all her life and her religious beliefs are a recurring theme in her work. Christina never married, although she was engaged twice - one of her fiancés was the Pre-Raphaelite painter, James Collinson. She spent her time writing and volunteering for charitable works. It is said she even considered going to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, but in the end ill health prevented her from doing so. Best known for her ballads and long narrative poems, she also wrote some prose and children's verses. Christina was admired by contemporaries including Swinburne, Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her work was to have an influence on later writers such as Virginia Woolf and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Rossetti's poetry has a spirituality and sensitivity that has led to her redisovery in recent decades, not least by feminist critics who praise her powerful and independent poetic voice. With:Dinah BirchProfessor of English Literature and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at Liverpool University Rhian WilliamsLecturer in Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of GlasgowNicholas ShrimptonEmeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:39.0	For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co. UK forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy
0:46.5	the program. Hello in 1872 Christina Rosetti wrote a poem which has since become one of our best loved Christmas carols.
0:55.0	It begins, In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.
0:59.6	Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Some of you will be singing along. This melancholy
1:06.0	lyric with its deceptively simple language and form is characteristic of
1:09.7	Rosetti's style, as is its religious subject matter. She was a divide Anglican, but Christina Rosetti
1:16.5	never married, although her life was not devoid of romance. Her poetry is passionate, sensuous,
1:21.2	even erotic, its meaning often ambiguous and laced with mystery.
1:25.4	She came from a celebrated artistic family, her brother was the prominent pre-Rafflite Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
1:31.3	Today her poetry is perhaps even better known than his, but what do we really
1:34.9	know about the life and works of the woman behind such original verses as Goblin Market and the
1:39.5	sonnet Remember? With me to discuss the life and poetry of Christina Rosetti,
1:44.0	Adana Birch, professor of English literature, and provides
1:47.1	Chancellor for research at Liverpool University.
1:49.8	Rian Williams, lecturer in 19th century English literature at the University of Glasgow
	...

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