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Christina Rossetti's Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets (1881): Exploring the Fearfulness of Forgiveness
Author(s) -
Ludlow Elizabeth
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12127
Subject(s) - sonnet , forgiveness , consciousness , psychology , poetics , literature , psychoanalysis , shame , face (sociological concept) , poetry , aesthetics , philosophy , art , social psychology , linguistics , neuroscience
In Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets , Christina Rossetti models a posture of fearfulness in the face of God's unique prerogative to forgive. Throughout, she deploys the dialogic properties of the sonnet sequence to engender recognition of the relational basis of existence. Unpacking its psalm‐inflected exploration of the interior journey of sin, shame and redemption, this article details Later Life's affinity with the poetics of George Herbert and John Donne. It also proposes that Later Life anticipates Karl Barth's Reformation‐inflected emphasis on the shattering recognition that ‘Through the forgiveness of sins… there is reflected in this human self‐consciousness a consciousness of a wholly different self’ (532).