Christina Rossetti

Poetry, Ecology, Faith

Emma Mason

Spiritual Lives

Provides an absorbing biography of renowned nineteenth-century poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Argues that her poetry, diaries, letters, and devotional commentaries are engaged with contemporary theological debate
Shows that Rossetti's works forge a phenomenological way into spirituality through a style that poetically captures the experience of faith
Explains that this phenomenological style provides a key to understanding Rossetti's spirituality
Considers key details of her life, including her role as carer to her father; her association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and other prominent Victorian intellectuals; her charity work; and her own struggles with ill health

Christina Rossetti

Poetry, Ecology, Faith

Emma Mason

Description

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is regarded as one of the greatest Christian poets to write in English. While Rossetti has firmly secured her place in the canon, her religious poetry was for a long time either overlooked or considered evidence of a melancholic disposition burdened by faith. Recent scholarship has redressed reductive readings of Christian theology as repressive by rethinking it as a form of compassionate politics. This shift has enabled new readings of Rossetti's work, not simply as a body of significant nineteenth-century devotional literature, but also as a marker of religion's relevance to modern concerns through its reflections on science and materialism, as well as spirituality and mysticism.

Emma Mason offers a compelling study of Christina Rossetti, arguing that her poetry, diaries, letters, and devotional commentaries are engaged with both contemporary theological debate and an emergent ecological agenda. In chapters on the Catholic Revival, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, contemporary debates on plant and animal being, and the relationship between grace and apocalypse, Mason reads Rossetti's theology as an argument for spiritual materialism and ecological transformation. She ultimately suggests that Rossetti's life and work captures the experience of faith as one of loving intimacy with the minutiae of creation, a divine body in which all things, material and immaterial, human and nonhuman, divine and embodied, are interconnected.

Christina Rossetti

Poetry, Ecology, Faith

Emma Mason

Spiritual Lives

Christina Rossetti

Poetry, Ecology, Faith

Emma Mason

Spiritual Lives

Author Information

Emma Mason is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on poetry and poetics 1750-present, religion and literature, philosophy and literature, ecology, and affect theory. She is the co-author of Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (with Mark Knight; OUP, 2006) and Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2004). Mason edits the Bloomsbury monograph series New Directions in Religion and Literature; and co-edits the Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (with Neil Badmington; OUP).

Christina Rossetti

Poetry, Ecology, Faith

Emma Mason

Spiritual Lives

Reviews and Awards

"The brilliance of this book rests in no small measure on Mason's accomplishment as literary critic, biographer and theologian. Her analysis, in chapter 1, of the influence of the Cappadocians and of key Anglo-Catholic thinkers on Rossetti is an object lesson in patient, sympathetic analysis. Equally, Mason's reminder that Rossetti was – despite popular views – no quiet and lonely poet will surprise some readers. I hope that readers will be energised by Mason's challenge to re-engage with the theological and environmental radicalism of Rossetti and wider Victorian Christian culture." -- Rachel Mann, Manchester Metropolitan University, Modern Believing

"Every so often a book falls into your hands that speaks immediately and energet-ically to your own imaginative concerns....As I contemplate the environmental crisis - or catastrophe, as we are told we have only 12 years left to get our act together - faced by the world today, Mason's portrayal of Rossetti's faith and poetry offers theological and prayerful resources to inspire contemplation of God's faithful grace, enough to transcend any apocalypse. This is a work of theological hope that is profound enough to fathom the depths of anxiety today." -- Frankie Ward, Workington, Theology

"Mason's attention to Rossetti's fascination with "multiplicity" generates some provocative new readings of her work, not least "Goblin Market." Readers interested in Rossetti, Victorian religion, and contemporary eco-theology more generally will find it stimulating." -- Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, College at Brockport, State University of New York, Religion and the Arts

"[a] most compelling study" -- David Marx Book Reviews

"I would recommend this book to anyone currently writing on Rossetti or thinking about doing so." -- Diane D'Amico, Review 19

"[A] reasoned, convinced and convincing work, that shows Christina Rossetti to be far more than we have been led to believe ... Mason does a fine job of putting a real importance behind the work of Christina Rossetti, a poet truly ahead of her time." --John F. Deane, The Irish Catholic