Form and Meter
The meter and rhyme scheme are irregular in "Goblin Market." The poem generally follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, but not always. In fact, sometimes there's a long gap between a word and its rhyme, and...
Speaker
There is no first-person narrator in "Goblin Market" like in many other poems. There's no "I." Instead, there's an omniscient third-person narrator like you'd find in most novels or short stories....
Setting
"Goblin Market" seems to take place in some kind of fantasy parallel universe with several important differences from our own world. First of all, there are goblins, and they have a traveling fruit...
Sound Check
Christina Rossetti always insisted that "Goblin Market" was a children's poem, and it definitely sounds like one. The short lines, vivid imagery, and frequent repetitions and lists make it sound si...
What's Up With the Title?
The title of our poem is self-explanatory: "Goblin Market." It's about the fruit market run by goblins. It doesn't seem too tricky … or is it? Like the poem itself, the title "Goblin Market"...
Calling Card
Like all members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement of poets and artists, Christina Rossetti was interested in providing the nitty-gritty detail of everything she described. "Goblin Market" is overflow...
Tough-O-Meter
The language is relatively easy (aside from the occasional unfamiliar fruit or animal), and the basic story of the poem isn't too hard to get our heads around. But you could spend your whole life t...
Brain Snacks
Sex Rating
Most of the sexy stuff in "Goblin Market" is implied, rather than explicitly described. There are some lines that are almost ludicrously erotic – they're so over-the-top that it's hard not to...
Shout Outs
The Bible, Genesis 1: the whole "forbidden fruit" plot in "Goblin Market" is often read as an allusion to Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden...