D. G. Rossetti and the Art of Representation

Abstract

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the important painters and poets of the Victorian Era. He, along with other prominent art critics, painters, poets co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The main goal of this Brotherhood was to adopt the natural representation in both poetry and painting over, what they defined as “mechanistic approach”. This drew both, approbation and appreciation from all corners of Victorian England. This 7-member Brotherhood comprised of famous names like William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner, in addition to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The premise of my paper is to study the similarity of D.G. Rossetti’s representations combining paintings and poetry with the modern representative device – meme. Memes are pictures from popular-culture used in reference to individualistic situations to create a humorous response. Rossetti used popular references from Bible or Classical Stories to illustrate his poetry. It is interesting to study how he combines various references into both paintings and poetry to create a synesthetic synchronization.