SOURCE: Fuchs, Miriam. “Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Caught Between Two Centuries.” Victorian Newsletter no. 63 (spring 1983): 3-7.

In the following essay, Fuchs considers Rossetti's place in literature, contending that “his attempt to push against the limitations of his art reveal that he was caught between the nineteenth century and the stirrings of modernism.”

An awareness of a particularly striking correspondence in Rossetti's work can increase our appreciation of the man responsible for creating the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. The sonnets of “The House of Life” tend to be densely packed with figurative language, and the paintings of the late 1850s tend to be crowded with objects, details, and patterns. Critics may view these qualities as flaws, but, if so, they are important flaws that suggest Rossetti's instincts were beyond his ability to give them specific form. He was not just a late Romantic or even a later medievalist, preoccupied with various blessed...