Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The poetic painter
LE3 .A278 2010
2010
Rigg, Patricia
Acadia University
Bachelor of Arts
Honours
English
English & Theatre Studies
My thesis “ Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Poetic Painter” explores the double works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a revolutionary artist of the nineteenth century who created his own definition of aesthetic beauty built through the spiritual and physical image of the female body. Through his double works of art Rossetti combines both poetry and painting to illuminate the emotions of his female subjects like no artist had done before him. In Chapter One I will discuss Rossetti’s participation in the Pre‐ Raphaelite Brotherhood, examining specific techniques that would later influence his own aesthetic definition of beauty. Chapter Two explores Rossetti’s departure from the Pre‐ Raphaelite ideals and establishes his notions of the body’s beauty and the soul’s beauty that would later dominate his works. Chapter Three explores Rossetti’s most successful double works of art. In these works he focuses on the status of the fallen woman in Victorian Society, elevating her situation and giving her a voice through his poetry. In the end, Rossetti is able to create his own definition of aesthetic beauty that focuses on the equivalencies between the soul’s beauty and the body’s beauty, innocence and seductiveness, life and death.
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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:745