Jenny

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Excerpt from Jenny
Lazy laughing languid Jenny.
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea.
Whose head upon my knee to-night
Rests for a while, as if grown light
With all our dances and the sound
To which the wild tunes spun you round:
Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
Of kisses which the blush between
Could hardly make much daintier;
Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
Is countless gold incomparable:
Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
Of Love's exuberant hotbed: - Nay,
Poor flower left torn since yesterday
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Genres: Poetry, Classics, Victorian

35 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2018

About the author

British poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, brother of Christina Georgina Rossetti, founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, a society, in England in 1848 to advance the style and spirit of Italian painting before Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio); his known portraits and his vividly detailed, mystic poems, include "The Blessed Damozel" (1850).

This illustrator and translator with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais later mainly inspired and influenced a second generation of artists and writers, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the Symbolists, a group of chiefly French writers and artists, who of the late 1800s rejected realism and used symbols to evoke ideas and emotions. He served as a major precursor of Aestheticism, an artistic and intellectual movement or the doctrine, originating in Britain in the late 19th century, that from beauty, the basic principle, derives all other, especially moral, principles.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m glad this wasn’t the first long poem I’d read by Rossetti. The lurid theme (for the Victorian era) and contemporary theoretical trend towards gender studies are the only things going for it. The meter and rhyme are rather simple, and the theme is just as tired and worn out as poor Jenny. From Petronius to the Police’s “Roxanne,” the madonna–whore complex/hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold lament is as old as the “oldest profession” in Western culture. This poem doesn’t add much to the discussion, beyond being a Victorian representation of the trope.

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Need to re-read again, might change my rating later.

[Yello 🧸 · Rating 3 out of 5]

for class

[Ashley Marilynne Wong · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it a bit sexist but perhaps my view would alter when I had attended my lecture and seminar on it and had developed a better understanding of it? Let's wait and see...