Rossetti's poems, unlike those of Tennyson and Arnold, show little evidence that he believed science or technology to have any importance. In fact, he once stated — probably tongue in cheek — that he did not know if the earth went round the sun or the sun around the earth. Nonetheless, his love of medieval settings for his poems and paintings reveals a relation to the modern world and its science — a relation of flight and avoidance. Can you find any attitudes or ideas in individual poems that nonetheless reveal any stamp of modern scientific thought?


Last modified 2000