Editing Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (section)

==Illustration and poetry==
Many members of the 'inner' Pre-Raphaelite circle ([[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]], [[John Everett Millais]], [[William Holman Hunt]], [[Ford Madox Brown]], [[Edward Burne-Jones]]) and 'outer' circle ([[Frederick Sandys]], [[Arthur Hughes (artist)|Arthur Hughes]], [[Simeon Solomon]], [[Henry Hugh Armstead]], [[Joseph Noel Paton]], [[Frederic Shields]], [[Matthew James Lawless]]) were working concurrently in painting, illustration, and sometimes poetry.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Victorian Illustration: The Pre-Raphaelites, the Idyllic School and the High Victorians|last=Goldman|first=Paul|publisher=Lund Humphries|year=2004|location=Burlington, VT|pages=1–51}}</ref> Victorian morality judged literature as superior to painting, because of its "noble grounds for noble emotion."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Pre-Raphaelites in Literature and Art|url=https://archive.org/details/preraphaelitesin0000well|url-access=registration|last=Welland|first=Dennis S. R.|publisher=George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.|year=1953|location=London, UK|pages=[https://archive.org/details/preraphaelitesin0000well/page/14 14]|isbn=9780836960464}}</ref> [[Robert Williams Buchanan|Robert Buchanan]] (a writer and opponent of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) felt so strongly about this artistic hierarchy that he wrote: "The truth is that literature, and more particularly poetry, is in a very bad way when one art gets hold of another, and imposes upon it its conditions and limitations."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Buchanan|first=Robert W.|date=October 1871|title=The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D.G. Rossetti|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924013268887|journal=The Contemporary Review}} as cited in Welland, D.S.R. The Pre-Raphaelites in Literature and Art. London, UK: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 14.</ref> This was the hostile environment in which Pre-Raphaelites were defiantly working in various media. The Pre-Raphaelites attempted to revitalize [[subject painting]], which had been dismissed as artificial. Their belief that each picture should tell a story was an important step for the unification of painting and literature (eventually deemed the [[Sister Arts]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/1.1.html|title=Chapter One: Ruskin's Theories of the Sister Arts — Ut Pictura Poesis|website=www.victorianweb.org|access-date=2017-11-21}}</ref>), or at least a break in the rigid hierarchy promoted by writers like Robert Buchanan.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Letter from D.G. Rossetti to William Allingham|last=Rossetti|first=Dante Gabriel|work=The Pre-Raphaelites in Literature and Art|year=1855}}</ref>

The Pre-Raphaelite desire for more extensive affiliation between painting and literature also manifested in illustration. Illustration is a more direct unification of these media and, like subject painting, can assert a narrative of its own. For the Pre-Raphaelites, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti specifically, there was anxiety about the constraints of illustration.<ref name=":0" /> In 1855, Rossetti wrote to [[William Allingham]] about the independence of illustration: "I have not begun even designing for them yet, but fancy I shall try the 'Vision of Sin' and 'Palace of Art' etc. – those where one can allegorize on one's own hook, without killing for oneself and everyone a distinct idea of the poet's."<ref name=":0" /> This passage makes apparent Rossetti's desire to not just support the poet's narrative, but to create an allegorical illustration that functions separately from the text as well. In this respect, Pre-Raphaelite illustrations go beyond depicting an episode from a poem, but rather function like subject paintings within a text.