Socrates and Rossetti : An analysis of Goblin Market and its use in the classroom

Abstract: ABSTRACT This essay concerns Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market and its use in a Swedish upper secondary classroom. The purpose of this essay was to analyse the poem through a Marxist perspective and investigate how both the analysis of the poem and the poem itself could be used when teaching English to an upper secondary class. This was done in two stages; firstly by analysing the Victorian society’s effect on Rossetti’s poem through a Marxist criticism perspective and secondly by using a specific pedagogic method called the Socratic Dialogue method when analysing the use of the analysis and the poem in the classroom. When analysing the poem and how it has been affected by its contemporary society, it becomes clear that the poem provides a critique in several ways towards consumerism and social ideals of Victorian Britain. Concerning the use of the poem and the analysis in the upper secondary English classroom it is evident that the poem and the literary analysis combined provides an interesting view on Victorian Britain for the pupils to discuss while having Socratic seminars.