Christina Georgina Rossetti: The Italian Heritage

This text investigates the poems of Christina Rossetti and uncovers the latent inter- and hypertextual relationships they have with the writings of her father, with Italian literature, and, in particular, with the writings of Metastasio and Dante. Intertextuality in Rossetti emerges at various levels and is evident in her language as it is in her style, in her concepts as it is in the content of her works, and yet analysis evinces that her corpus undergoes a gradual and yet profound transformation over the years in spite of the deeply entrenched influence of Metastasio and her father, and his works on Dante. In fact, if at the beginning she tries to acquire their same harmonious and melodic ease of expression, later she moves successfully beyond them, and her relationship with her sources becomes hypertextual, and her poems independent compositions, works of art in their own right.