The Goblin Market

Record summary

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” first published in 1862, depicts sisters encountering seductive goblin merchants whose fruit creates a dangerous relation between the ordinary domestic world and an enchanted marketplace. The poem is relevant to boundary studies through its nocturnal or marginal setting, altered appetite, bodily risk, rescue, and uncertain status between fairy tale, Christian allegory, and erotic or economic symbolism. It should be compared with British goblin and fairy-market traditions, while remaining clearly an authored literary work rather than a folkloric encounter report.