Despite new historical study of her contexts, Christina Rossetti continues to haunt the reader as a displaced subjectivity emptied of history. Through an analysis of the posthumous in her work, the construction of 'Christina Rossetti' by her brothers, and the history of reception, this study asks how 'speaking with the dead' can avoid critical ventriloquy. The figure of the mother is offered as a paradigm for theorising a new reading that refuses to exorcise the ghost of 'Christina Rossetti'.

Autorentext

Alison Chapman is Lecturer in 18th-and 19th-centuryLliterature at the University of Dundee, Scotland.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements Abbreviations List of Plates Introduction: The Haunting of Christina Rossetti 'A Bizarre Medium': The Return of the Dead and New Historicism Speaking with the Dead: Recovering Lost Voices Christina Rossetti in Effect: Reading Biographies Defining the Feminine Subject: Fraternal Revisions I Spectres and Spectators: Fraternal Revisions II Father's Place, Mother's Space: Italy and the Paradisal The Afterlife of Poetry: 'Goblin Market' Bibliography Index