Goblin Market

Because the plot of “Goblin Market” pulls from folklore, it makes sense for its form to draw from the formal aspects of folktales too. Rossetti draws from older narrative forms like ballads, sonnet sequences, and epics. However, she does not use a regular rhyme and meter scheme often found in those older forms. Rossetti uses meters experimentally, frequently changing them to mirror a character’s action.

Rossetti replicates the shouts of street vendors in the first listing of goblin fruit by alternating between trochee and dactyl feet (Roe). A foot shows where a speaker emphasizes a word. Stressed is where people emphasize a word while speaking. The rest of the word is unstressed. A trochee emphasizes the first syllable and un-stresses the second. Dactyls are a bit longer. They have a stressed syllable that proceeds two unstressed syllables. The mixed pattern makes the lines sound like breaths: “mel-uhns and raz-ber-ees.”

Rossetti’s meter is trickier to pin down. The meter measures the number of poetic feet per line. Rossetti, in this part of the poem, does not stick to one type of foot per line.