Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Inner Standing-Point' and 'Jenny' Reconstrued

The idea that the 'emotional influence' of art demands an 'inner standing-point' was first expressed in writing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1869, but it did not appear in print until 1871, when he summoned it as part of his defence of his poem 'Jenny' against the 'Fleshly School' attack of Robert Buchanan. When understood as a form of Einfühlung/empathy and 'negative capability,' the idea can be seen operating in several of Rossetti's poems and pictures of the period of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-53) and earlier. So understood, it also provides a crucial and highly productive point of entry into 'Jenny,' where the reader is asked to feel inside the 'situation' and mentality of the 'young and thoughtful man of the world' who speaks the 'semi-dramatic monologue' while the prostitute of the title lies asleep on his knee. In the course of his increasingly sympathetic response to Jenny, the speaker creates an intricate web of allusions to biblical texts, references to contemporary legislation, and intertextual relationships with works by such artists and writers as Augustine, Titian, Hogarth, Ruskin, and E.B. Browning.