<foreign lang="Latin">Mater Pulchrae Delectionis</foreign>

<foreign lang="Latin">Mater Pulchrae Delectionis</foreign> Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1847 <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnliterary> <citntranslationoriginal> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citntranslationoriginal> <citnpictorial> <title/> <artist/> <location/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p> <cit>According to WMR (<bibl> <xref doc="a.pr5240.f11.rad" from="661" workcode="2-1847">1911</xref>, <pages>661</pages> </bibl>), the poem was written <quote>very early in 1847</quote> as part of DGR's <bibl> <title level="wrk"> <xref doc="a.11-1847.raw">“Songs of the Art Catholic”</xref> project. These works were to have included poems which, located in a contemporary setting (like <xref doc="a.3-1847.raw">“My Sister's Sleep”</xref> ), would nevertheless call back to (if not actually call up) medieval religious cultural forms and ideas.

In this case the poem represents itself as a kind of free translation or contemporary reconfiguration of an original Latin hymn to the Virgin Mary.

The pastiche element in works like this produce a kind of magical character —poems aspiring to what might be termed a secular sacramentalism, designed to re-install (not simply re-imagine) the ethos and spiritual agency of “the Art Catholic”. These texts formed an integral relation to DGR's early pictorial work as well, which pursued the Art Catholic in a visual medium. At its core the project was dominated by a preoccupation with the Virgin Mary and her secular avatars, like Dante's Beatrice.

The poem should be compared with DGR's highly original translation of a portion of the poem from the <xref doc="a.">Auchinleck Manuscript</xref> commonly known as “The Early Life of the Virgin Mary”, and which DGR knew as “Joachim and Anne” from an 1840 printed text.

Textual History: Composition

Apparently the work was composed early in 1847 while DGR was putting together his <xref doc="a.11-1847.raw">Songs of the Art Catholic</xref> . There are two surviving manuscripts: the first page of a fair copy (location: Duke U. library) comprising lines 1-16 of the received poem; and a complete text of the poem (location: the Wormsley Library). Both of these texts date from 1847 and are titled “Mater Pulchrae Delectionis”.

Textual History: Revision

The poem was heavily revised in 1869 when DGR was preparing his <xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref> 1870 for the press. The revision was so extensive, however, that the result was a poem ( <xref doc="a.51-1869.raw">Ave</xref> ) that has to be considered a work in its own right.

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

The poem is all but completely organized in iconographical terms.

Printing History

First printed by WMR in the <xref doc="a.ap4.n12.16.rad" from="483" workcode="2-1847" to="484">Pall Mall Magazine</xref> (Dec. 1898, pages 483-484), presumably from the complete manuscript now in the Wormsley library. Printed again in 1911 (pages 661-662).

Pictorial

The poem looks forward to a whole series of related Marian paintings and drawings that DGR would execute in the late 40s and through the 50s. These pictures include <xref doc="a.s87.raw">Mary Nazarene</xref> , <xref doc="a.s110.raw">Mary in the House of St. John</xref> , and <xref doc="a.3-1867.s78.raw">The Passover in the Holy Family</xref> (which were to form a triptych), as well as <xref doc="a.9-1848.s40.raw">The Girlhood of Mary Virgin</xref> , <xref doc="a.s44.raw">Ecce Ancilla Domini!</xref> , and <xref doc="a.s69.raw">The Annunciation</xref> .

Historical

Like all of DGR's <xref doc="a.11-1847.raw">Art Catholic</xref> materials, whether pictorial or textual, this work is intimately related to the mid-Victorian enthusiasm for High Church and Roman ideas and materials, liturgical as well as doctrinal. DGR's mother and sisters were closely involved with the Tractarian Movement and its aftermath; DGR's involvement in these things remained aesthetic and historicist, though in those respects his interests were simultaneously marked with serious personal and cultural issues.

Literary

The poem is closely related to Browning's dramatic monologues, and to Poe's efforts (in prose and poetry both) to dramatize the imagining of alternative worlds. Its immediate model, however, was John Keble's “The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, from his <hi rend="i">The Christian Year</hi> and.

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Baum, Manuscripts in the Duke University Library , 10

1911 See WMR's note (1911). It is “translated” in the first line; the move underscores the poem's historical self-consciousness. The passage clearly represents itself as a textual translation of a medieval painting (with symbolic coloring). i.e., from Bethlehem to Golgotha DGR's phrasing of the idea of the Immaculate Conception is consciously quaint—another of the poem's historicizing moves. Compare Psalms 118:22, Zechariah 4:7 and Matthew 21:42. The contemporary sign is important for establishing the poem's internal historicized urgency, i.e., its effort to produce a spiritual and aesthetic closure between the mid-nineteenth century and the medieval world evoked in the poem. The stanza's concluding reference to the painter nicely completes the thought of the text, which has just constructed an imaginary verbal portrait of the enthroned Virgin This poem's relation to <xref doc="a.1-1847.s244.raw">The Blessed Damozel</xref> is clearly represented here. The passage also recalls the culminant canto of Dante's <xref doc="a.dante002.2.rad" link="dead"> <hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi> </xref> . See Revelation 12:1. Echoes the opening of the <hi rend="i">Magnificat</hi> . 1911 Mater Pulchrae Delectionis (fair copy fragment, Duke U. Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1847 0 The Pall Mall Magazine, Volume 16 1898 0 Rossetti Album (miscellaneous collection, Getty/Wormsley Library) DGR and others 1835-1933 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0