Introduction

Working through this course will explore different interpretations of the poem, some of this is derived from Paul's booklet and some from Richard Gill's notes on Christina Rossetti, Selected Poems (Oxford Student Texts)

Gill begins by asking: what do the goblins mean? Rossetti was resistant to any symbolic meaning. But the fact that she 'commented on it 'more than once' in William Rossetti's words suggests that even she couldn't let it go and indicates its meaning was a matter of debate.

The first activity involves looking at a painting by Richard Dadd.

Richard Dadd is a really interesting guy. In 1842, on a walk with his father Dadd stabbed his father to death and then fled to the Continent, with the intention of murdering the Emperor of Austria. After stabbing someone in France, he was returned to England, stood trial and spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum.

In 1855, while in London's Bethlem Hospital (known colloquially as Bedlam), he began painting an astonishingly detailed picture called The Fairy-Teller's Masterstroke. This intricate picture took him nine years to complete. Meanwhile a few miles away, unknown to ether of them Rossetti was writing Goblin Market (finished in 1859, but published first in 1862).

Look through the next four slides and see if you can make links between Dadd's painting and Rossetti's poem?