"The Portrait"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, on the surface, Rossetti's poem "The Portrait" may not seem to be specifically dealing with the line between love and possession. However, looking deeper, the reader finds that whether love still exists or not, at the end, its selfless nature has at least to some degree given way to the possessive and controlling aspects of the artist. The author points out that this is an ekphrastic poem, a poem describing a piece of art, divided rather arbitrarily into two stanzas, including an opening octave composed of two a-b-b-a quartets and followed by a sextet of the a-b-c-a-b-c variety. The paper relates that the orderliness of the rhyme scheme and its almost singsong nature help to evoke a sense of the more traditional, spiritual and emotive elements of the portrait.

From the Paper:

"The plot of the poem, as it were, is a description of the way this faithful reproduction of the beloved is such that her beauty and soul-fullness shines through and may be seen by all, so that both the painter and many strangers may come together to look at the beloved in worship. It bears repeating that it is only on the surface that this poem is about a painting... on close examination, one finds that it is actually a poem describing the creator of this piece of art, as he relates to his lady, his audience, and his deity through art. In understanding the poem as dealing not so much with the description of a piece of art as with the way in which an artist can come to feel both about his work and about his models, one is able to open up whole new fields of interpretation, even allowing the work to be understood from a rather feminist perspective -- for as the author shifts from writing a poem about a painting and becomes caught up in righting instead about a person, one may also see his shift from the original love of that person to a point where he merely wishes to own, objectify, and eventually (an uncompromisingly) put them on display."

More papers on "The Portrait":

• Analytical Essay # 60245 : "Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poem "The Portrait"
• Analytical Essay # 34166 : "The Portrait of a Lady"
• Analytical Essay # 62807 : "Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady"

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