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Christina Rossetti's Apocalypse: Rhythm and Deferral in The Face of the Deep
- The Cambridge Quarterly
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 49, Number 4, December 2020
- pp. 357-371
- Article
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ABSTRACT:
Waiting for something, depending on what we are waiting for, can be a matter of long-tested patience or looming dread. The Face of the Deep, Christina Rossetti's commentary on the Book of Revelation, acknowledges both of these as important elements of Christian apocalypticism. In this article, I argue that the shifts between verse and prose rhythms in this commentary model a reading practice and devotional attitude which might be adopted when tackling the difficulties of Revelation and the problem of an end which has been imminent for eighteen hundred years. Changes in rhythm, for Rossetti, are a formal practice of patience, making it possible to mark and redeem the time.