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Pre-raphealite tarot. My partner picked this up awhile ago at the Seattle art museum during their Victorian radicals exhibit. At the time I glanced through it but didn't really connect with it.

Going back through it though, I see that this deck has a lot to offer.

#pre-raphealite #tarot #giuliano costa #seattle art museum #trevenbran #cards

She had a mouth Made to bring death to life,—the underlip Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself. Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, excerpt from “A Last Confession”

#dante gabriel rossetti #Dante Rossetti #pre-raphealite #victorian poetry #poetry #english poetry

So held she through her girlhood; as it were an angel-water'd lily,

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, excerpt from “Mary's Girlhood (for a Picture)“

#dante gabriel rossetti #pre-raphealite #poetry #english poetry

As we have seen, Christina George Rossetti refused to join the literary society that her brother was organising in the summer of 1848. Not only did she decline to attend meetings; she was not even willing to let her brother read her poems aloud in her absence. As D.G. Rossetti explained in a letter to Hunt, she was 'under the impression that it would seem like display, I believe, - a sort of thing she abhors.' Yet she was not reluctant to publish her poems in the Germ. Indeed, hatred of 'display' might be called the hallmark of the poetic view she established in the Germ. More ruthlessly than her male colleagues, she carries through the Pre-Raphaelite principle of eliminating all traces of contrivance or artifice. At first thought, other poems in the Germ seem more obviously 'Pre-Raphaelite', either in their use of medieval subject matter or archaic language or in their keen observation of natural details. Both characteristics are evident in the two poems by Thomas Woolner that opened the first issue [...] Christina Rossetti's poems may seem slight in comparison; most of them scrutinize a single thought or mood rather than dramatising a narrative. They are both intensely introspective and strangely reticent, as if to emphasize the Victorian woman's exclusion from the external world of public affairs along with her subjection to the demands of modesty. They may, then, seem to be 'women's poetry' more than they are 'Pre-Raphaelite poetry'. But in a more significant sense Rossetti's poems establish a poetic equivalent for the 'primitivist' literalism and the precise touch of the Pre-Raphaelite painting. They turn Pre-Raphaelite keenness of vision inward, and they present the results with the coolness of scientific observation, never with the extravagance of poetic 'display'. The diction is so lucid and precise, the metres and rhymes so skillfully handled, that the reader never notices the absence of the conceits and flourishes, the artful images and 'poetic' vocabulary that remain obtrusive in many of the other poems of the Germ. [...] Rossetti's diction is so lucid that later critics have tended to characterise her as a 'natural' poet, one to whom the words came in an effortless flow of inspiration. But a comparison to Woolner's poems, or others in the Germ, suggests that the apparent artlessness is the result of rigorous technical control. No awkward rhymes or rhythms, no inapposite word choices distract the reader from direct apprehension. This sharpens the effect of the withheld referent; the sense of wonder comes clear of poetic obscurity. As we shall see, this kind of technique, combining descriptive precision with an unknowable final signification, became important in the pictorial art of later Pre-Raphaelitism. In 1859 Christina Rossetti was the most accomplished of the poets associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Elizabeth Prettejohn, excerpt from “Chapter 2: Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood,” from The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites

#elizabeth prettejohn #pre-raphaelite sisterhood #pre-raphealite #christina rossetti #victorian literature and gender #notes #women in art

Flowers preach to us if we will hear:–

Christina Rossetti, excerpt from “Consider The Lilies Of The Field”

#christina rossetti #pre-raphealite #victorian literature #victorian poetry #english literature #english poetry #poetry

I am pale with sick desire,

Christina Rossetti, excerpt from “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto The Hills”

#christina rossetti #pre-raphealite #victorian literature #victorian poetry #english literature #english poetry #poetry

A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily.

Christina Rossetti, excerpt from “A Daughter Of Eve“

#christina rossetti #pre-raphealite #victorian literature #victorian poetry #english literature #english poetry

Nineteenth-century women poets, unlike their male counterparts, 'could not afford irony, for their first task was to show their right to a place in poetry, not their discordance with it.' Yet for Rossetti, as surely for Barrett Browning, part of the struggle to show her 'right to a place in poetry' involves an interrogation which certainly registers 'discordances' with those dominant discourses. Irony, says Mermin, 'with its doubleness of meaning and emotional detachment, went against everything a woman writer was supposed to be.' While this may be so, it is just these features that characterize many of Rossetti's most famous lyrics.

Susan Conley, excerpt from “Rossetti’s Cold Women: Irony and Liminal Fantasy in the Death Lyrics,” from The Culture of Christina Rossetti: Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts

#susan conley #christina rossetti #elizabeth barrett browning #victorian literature #victorian literature and gender #poetry #pre-raphealite #the culture of christina rossetti