| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
husband, teacher, friend, co-founder of an art movement, editor, illustrator, collector, pet owner/naturalist, mentor, mentally ill person, and addict. These multiple layers of self are rich and are deeply connected to his translations, his painting, and his poetry. The output of a full century and a half, however, provides too much material for satisfying analysis in a single work of the size projected here. Therefore, after providing some background, the examination will start in 1950. The portrayals of Rossetti I have identified fall easily into five groupings:
These are the portrayals that will be used throughout this work. Several have chronological boundries and are discrete representations while others reoccur across the time period covered.
Portrayal One, which focuses on Rossetti’s character and temperament, was created after Rossetti’s death by biographers influenced by his brother William Michael Rossetti. William Michael himself wrote biographical works that protected Rossetti’s reputation. Later, this work was amplified by William Michael’s daughter, Helen Rossetti Angeli. Portrayal One shows Rossetti as an Italian-Englishman who is a brother and a good friend. In the preface to the 1904 American edition of Rossetti’s collected works, William Michael writes, “Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared one another’s feelings and thoughts as intimately, in childhood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood, than Dante Gabriel and myself” (xii). William Michael did everything he could do to build Rossetti’s image. Rossetti’s niece begins her book Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Friends and Enemies, thus: “This book is