A Study On Pre-Raphaelite Poems From The Perspective Of Intertextuality

The thesis aims to research Pre-Raphaelite’s poems from the perspective of the intertextuality between picture and poem and discovers after close examining the relation between pictures and poems in their illustrations and sonnets for pictures that the intertexuality between picture and poem is an effective way for the Pre-Raphaelites to break through the limitations of strict rules of academism and to carry on the innovation of art.Along the way,the thesis explores further the verbal images widely used in Pre-Raphaelite’s poems and finds that the verbal images play an important role in multiplying the meaning of the poetic texts.Furthermore,the thesis analyzes the themes of Pre-Raphaelite’s poems and reveals that the dialogue between the irrational themes of Pre-Raphaelite’s poems and the subject consciousness in Victorian times is their attempt to resist the alienation of human nature and restore human creativity.As an artistic group majoring in painting and poetizing,Pre-Raphaelite revolt against the rational tradition of academism first from the perspective of the relation between poem and picture,which is reflected initially in the intertextuality between picture and poem in their illustrations and sonnets for painting.Pre-Raphaelite’s illustrations for poems are generally the adaptation of the poems and the difference or paradox between poem and picture create dialogue between them,which leads to the renewal of the meaning of the picture and the poem.Pre-Raphaelite’s poems for paintings are always the supplement and the imitation of the pictures.By expanding the expression scope of picture in time and space,the meaning of the poems and the paintings are both enriched.Meanwhile by imitating the expression mode of picture,their poems exhibit uncertainty and diversity in meaning.Pre-Raphaelite’s innovation strategy in the illustrations for poems and the poems for pictures is also reflected within a poetic text.In the Pre-Raphaelite’s poems,there exists intertexuality between verbal images and words or the culture contexts,which make words go beyond the established significant relationship between the signifier and signified and thus bring words back to its original state.In this state,words which are animated,passionate and divine exhibit unlimited potential energy of ambiguity and thus make the meaning of poetic texts multiply.The use of verbal images in Pre-Raphaelite poems is the presentation of their art principle in poem writing which goes against phonecentrism tradition and breaks the bonds of rationalism.Intertextuality is not only the method for Pre-Raphaelites to make innovations in art but also their attempt to reestablish subject consciousness and restore human creativity.In the thesis,the Victorian subject consciousness full of modem rationality is seen as a text and Pre-Raphaelite’s poems characteristic of sensibility,spirituality and ferity as an intertext.The intertext destroys and reestablishes Victorian subject consciousness in the interaction with the text and thus finds the power for the regeneration of Victorian culture.Pre-Raphaelite is in the transitional period between Romanism and the modernism.Their mode of thinking about poems from the perspective of paintings have great influence on modernism poems.The expressing way of modernism poems such as synaesthesia,skipping and non-sequences is in some way inherited from the way of intertextuality between poem and picture and writing poems with the mode of painting.Pre-Raphaelite ’s idea of art innovation and their thinking about how to resist the alienation of humanity and restore vitality and the creativity of human beings in the modern industrial and commercial society have a certain reference significance for us.