The Doom of the Sirens Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1869
sketch for a play <artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>This work is DGR's most elaborated treatment of one of his central symbolic preoccupations: the <hi rend="i">figura</hi> of the siren or <hi rend="i">la belle dame sans merci</hi>. Like Keats, DGR is completely sympathetic to the ambiguous valence of this <hi rend="i">femme fatale</hi>. Unlike Keats, his work is a lifelong exploration of the complex social and cultural significance of the figure, as one sees very clearly in this remarkable work. Its filiations are literal and direct, as one can see by reading it in relation to works like <xref doc="a.s234.raw"> <title level="wrk"> <hi rend="i">Ligeia Siren</hi> , <hi rend="i">Boatmen and Siren</hi> , “Death's Songsters” , “For the Wine of Circe” , “A Sea-Spell” , and “The Question” ; it develops obvious mutations in <hi rend="i">Lady Lilith</hi> , <hi rend="i">La Belle Dame Sans Merci</hi> , and <hi rend="i">The Card Dealer</hi> .

The opening paragraph of the work makes such a clear reference of Hunt's early painting <hi rend="i">A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Priest from the Persecution of the Druids</hi> that the work can scarcely not be read as an imaginative interpretation of Hunt's painting.

Like “The Orchard Pit” , this is an impressive imaginative conception, and it is unfortunate that DGR never executed either work beyond the prose sketches her made. In each case, however, what we have is sufficiently detailed to give a clear sense of the imaginative power of his thought.

Textual History: Composition

A prose cartoon for the work was drafted in 1869 in preparation for the unexecuted poetical work—a dramatic lyric based on events detailed in the cartoon. One of the notebooks at Duke University has a brief fragment describing how scene I was to begin. The brief lyric <foreign lang="latin">Tomaæ Fides</foreign> was to have been part of this poem.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

The work was first printed posthumously by WMR in volume I of his 1886 collected edition, and it was collected thereafter. WMR used the Duke manuscript as his copy text but he altered it in notable ways.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

1911 See WMR's note to <foreign lang="latin">Thomæ Fides</foreign> (1911), p. 673.
Duke Library Manuscript The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 The Doom of the Sirens Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book IV, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871, 1880 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0