Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “St. Agnes of Intercession”

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1. What associations might St. Agnes have had for a Victorian reader?

2. What is the subject of the tale? What does it suggest about the sources of artistic creation?

3. What do we know about the speaker and the kind of art to which he aspires? Do we know his name? What is his relationship to the Victorian art world?

4. What ae unusual features of his response to the paintings of Bucciuolo Angiolieri? What does the reader suspect may be his relation to the earlier painter? Why do you think a relatively obscure painter was chosen as the object of his infatuation?

5. What does the speaker learn about the history of Blanzifiore dal’ l’Ambra? What are parallels between her romance and that of the narrator? At this point, what does the reader expect will be the end of the story?

6. How has the speaker been changed by his experience? At what point does the story end? What may have been Rossetti’s motives for delaying in finishing it?

7. What serious themes, if any, does the story suggest? Is the speaker deranged? What kind of reincarnation or transhistorical psychic kindship does the story seem to evoke?

8. Are there elements of the tale’s language or presentation which make it more convincing?