Response Blog - Week Three (September 24)

In this week's class, we focused on annotating both the text and the images of A Christmas Carol. What I found most interesting from annotating the text was the content annotations. Craft annotations are typically what we have to do when engaging with a text in order to draw out meaning. However, looking out for words or phrases that feel uniquely applied or that are not familiar is something I will occasionally neglect. It was especially interesting doing this with a Victorian Era text, as there are phrases and objects that simply are not prominent anymore, but are so naturally embedded into the text that I will occasionally gloss over them without second guessing. Revisiting these elements helps provide additional contextual information for the Victorian Era a novella like A Christmas Carol exist in. I also found the illustration annotations interesting, particularly in seeing how Leech was able to use light in the black and white woodcuts. The steel plate engravings are able to convey light through the use of the hand painted colours of the image, however, the black and white woodcuts are able to do this as well. This is most evident in Stave 5 where, even though the image is black and white, Leech is able to a create a vibrant image through the use of negative space and minimal hatching to render the scene. It was interesting looking at the different illustrations found in the novella and seeing how Leech used specific concepts, such as light, throughout the images to collaborate with Dickens' text. 

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