Paper Links 19th Century Poem and Modern Marketing

Rod Landis gave paper at College English Association's Annual Conference

Rod Landis, Associate Prof. of English in Ketchikan, gave a paper at the College English Association’s annual conference in St. Louis, “‘Come Buy, Come Buy’: The Mechanics of Creating Consumer Desire in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’" on March 27. Landis demonstrates that the poem evinces unconscious anxieties Victorians had about the role of advertising in the shaping of consumer markets, strategies of which closely mirror those of the postmodern age. Landis proposes that the goblins’ real intention is revealed as inculcation into their target audience overwhelming lust for goods, regardless of ability to pay. The rise of this debt-based economy presented so forcefully in “Goblin Market” foreshadows the advent of easy credit in a democratic society.

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