Year 10 English - Danse Macabre
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was a British poet, who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem "Remember", and for the words of what became the popular Christmas carol "In the Bleak Midwinter".
Rossetti was born in London and educated at home by her mother. Her siblings were the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, and Maria Francesca Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was an Italian poet and a political asylum seeker from Naples; their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori, author of The Vampyre. In the 1840s her family was stricken with severe financial difficulties due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school.
(Click Here for Christina Rossetti Biography)
Rossetti's PoetryChristina Rossetti's real life was very interesting and her poetry often reflected her own meloncholy. The the two poems here - "The Hour and the Ghost" and "Memory" - are connected to love and death and fit well with the theme Danse Macabre. |