Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game That Must Be Lost

Abstract

Why did the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti come to dominate the cultural geography of England between 1850 and 1910? And why, having attained that kind of eminence, did Rossetti's star decline so precipitously with the advent of Modernism? Finally, what is there about Rossetti's work and its historical aftermath that makes these questions important ones to ask? The cultural and aesthetic problems raised by those questions are the subject of this fascinating book. Jerome McGann, an eminent authority on Rossetti, demonstrates the programmatic aims of Rossetti's innovative multimedia work by focusing on two issues, one philosophical and one cultural. First, McGann shows how in Rossetti's work high-order thinking processes are modeled and executed as aesthetic practices. Second, from Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite 'art of the inner standing point' McGann argues that Rossetti forces a revision of the cultural norms commonly used for evaluating artistic success and failure.