Goblin Market, Christina Georgina Rossetti - David B. Drake (essay date 1992)
David B. Drake (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: "Rossetti's Goblin Market" in The Explicator, Vol. 51, No. 1, Fall, 1992, pp. 22-24.
[In the following essay, Drake discusses "Goblin Market" as a modified epyllion—a small epic—in which Lizzie plays the role of the epic heroine.]
Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" exhibits several of the characteristics and conventions of epic poetry and should be studied as a somewhat modified version of the epyllion—a poem that emulates the classical epic in subject matter and technique, but is decidedly shorter (typically depicting just a single heroic episode) and narrower in scope—modified because the epyllion is ideally composed using dactylic hexameter, and "Goblin Market" is, of course, written in free verse.
A substantial number of critics have noted that Rossetti's heroine, Lizzie, resembles a transfigured Christ who redeems her peccant sister by sacrificing herself...
[The entire page is 1031 words long]
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