ABSTRACT
It is a paradox that, precisely as Rossetti turns away from poetry that can be too readily construed as personal, he insists that poetry must be personal to be effective. As he writes these sonnets, Rossetti is looking back on The House of Life through the contrasting filters of Kelmscott and his affair with Jane Morris on the one hand and Buchanan and 'The Fleshly School of Poetry' on the other. In this new context, he moves to reclaim his poem from its readers, insisting that they accept his opinions and, if they wish to write poetry of their own, follow his example. Reduced to its elements, the theory of poetry put forward in these two sonnets is an earnest restatement of Philip Sidney'S wittily disingenuous formula 'look in thy heart, and write' (Astrophil and Stella, I, 14). Where Astrophil's objective is to communicate his love to Stella, Rossetti asserts that his - like Sidney'S - is to create a work of art, hence the aim that 'The inspir'd recoil shall pierce [his] brother's heart' and not his lover's. At the same time, and in stark contrast with 'Inclusiveness', his avowed purpose is no longer to encourage his readers to scrutinise their experiences and ideas but to revive his own intense emotions within them.
