Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (Spiritual Lives)

__Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith__ suggests that the life and works of Christina Rossetti offer a commentary on the relationship between Christianity and ecology. It counters readings of her as a withdrawn or apolitical poet by reading her Anglo-Catholic faith in the context of her commitment to the nonhuman. Rossetti considered the doctrines and ideas associated with the Catholic Revival to be revelatory of an ecology of creation in which all things, material and immaterial, human and nonhuman, divine and embodied, are interconnected. The book focuses on her close attention to the Bible, the Church Fathers, and Francis of Assisi to show how her poetry, prose, and letters refused the nineteenth-century commodification of creation and declared it as a new and shared reality kept in eternal flux by the nondual love of the Trinity. In chapters on her early involvement in the Oxford Movement, her relationship to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Franciscan commitment to the diversity of plant and animal life through her anti-vivisection activism, and green reading of the apocalypse as transformative rather than destructive, the book traces an ecological love command in her writing, one she considered it a Christian duty to fulfil. It illuminates Rossetti’s at once sensitive and keenly ethical readings of the place of flora and fauna, stars and planets, humans and angels in creation, and is also the first study of its kind to argue for the centrality of spiritual materialism in her work, one driven by a prevenient and green grace. 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. Cover 1 Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith 6 Copyright 7 Dedication 8 Acknowledgements 10 Contents 12 Note on Names 14 Note on Text 16 Introduction: Poetry, Ecology, Faith 18 Victorian Ecocriticism 24 Education and Politics 32 An Ecological Love Command 37 Notes 43 1: What is Catholic is Christian: Tractarian Origins, 1830–1849 50 ‘The great Catholic Revival’ 54 Patristics and the Bible 61 A ‘dangerous science’ 70 Notes 80 2: Kinship and Creation: Amongst the Pre-Raphaelites, 1850–1862 87 An Art-Catholic 90 From Plato to Nyssa 99 ‘Kinness of nature’ 109 Notes 118 3: Pretty Beasts and Flowers: A Companionable Faith, 1863–1884 124 Creation as Companion 129 ‘The Covenant of the Rainbow includes animals’ 136 ‘Evergreen love’ 150 Notes 164 4: Green Grace and the End of Time, 1885–1894 176 The ‘grace of baptism’ 179 ‘No more sea’ 186 Keno ̄sis and the Weakening of Creation 197 Notes 209 Select Bibliography 214 Manuscripts 214 Other 214 Index 224 Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) Is Regarded Is One Of The Greatest Christian Poets To Write In English. This Compelling And Authoritative Biography Shows That Christina Rossetti's Poetry, Diaries, Letters, And Devotional Commentaries, Are Engaged With Contemporary Theological Debate. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) is regarded as one of the greatest Christian poets to write in English. This compelling and authoritative biography shows that Christina Rossetti's poetry, diaries, letters, and devotional commentaries, are engaged with contemporary theological debate.