On The Female Themes And Ethical Connotations In Dante Rossetti's Poetry

In the history of western literary criticism, the ethical literary criticism can date back to Plato in ancient Greek. However, the real revival of the critical method was emerged in the 80s of last century in North America and Europe. It is until recent years that under the energetic advocation of Professor Nie Zhenzhao, the method has been gradually accepted and applied in literary critical circle of China. As a methodology, it aims at giving a correct explanation of ethical phenomena in literary text and tries to make a judgment of values from the ethical perspective.Dante Gabriel Rossetti is an influential and important poet and painter in the 19th century of England, and he has also been a controversial and legendary leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, the thesis tries to explore and reveal the ethical connotations through the analysis and explanation of four categories of fair lady in Rossetti's poetry.The thesis falls into six sections. The first section briefly introduces Rossetti's life, major works and some critics' remarks on him and his works at home and abroad. It enables readers to know some background of the thesis so as to understand the thesis properly. Chapter one briefly introduces the revival and development of the modern ethical literary criticism, as well as its application in literary criticism at home and abroad. This chapter also discusses the definition, contents and the significance of the critical method applied in Rossetti's poetry. Chapter two is concerned with the reasons and facts that contribute to Rossetti's ethical thoughts and ideals of aesthetic ethics. In addition to the social and historical ethical background of the age, English and Italian culture also play an important part in Rossetti's ethical ideals. Chapter three focuses on the analysis of the four categories of Rossetti's fair ladies and attempts to explore the ethical thoughts of female themes in Rossetti's poetry. Chapter four discusses the ethical ideals existing in Rossetti's poetry. Although Rossetti merely dreams only one dream in his lifetime, his dream actually has many aspects, like the ideals of new Trinity, the melting of body and soul, etc. The last section summarizes what has been discussed in previous chapters of the thesis. According to the revealing of ethical connotations in Rossetti's Poetry, It concludes that Rossetti's ethical thoughts are not anti-Christian, but alter-Christian. He tries to build a new religion of Beauty centering on female's beauty of the unity of body and soul in order to provide the people of that age with an outlet for their spiritual plight, which in fact demonstrates Rossetti's humanism as an important artist in English artistic history.