Alexandra Monstur's blog

Final Blog Post for December 3

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

I enjoyed this final class for ENG 910, in which we all presented our capstone project ideas to one another. To see how far we have collectively come as a group with our research is fulfilling, especially with how difficult this semester has been for all of us. While listening to my classmates’ presentations, I realized just how dynamic all of these Victorian Illustrated texts are.

Blog Post for November 26 2020

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

In today’s class, we had the pleasure of looking at the graphic novel version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. I enjoyed learning about the palimpsest theory, which is based off effacing an original piece of writing in order to write new text over top. However, despite writing on top of the effaced manuscript, pieces of the previous text still remain.

Oct 29 Blog Post

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

Today was an interesting day for presentations in class, as we looked at Salome by Oscar Wilde. I had never before encountered the text until this course. What first struck me was how abstract the illustrations appeared, as opposed to the illustrations Sidney Paget created for "The Man With the Twisted Lip"; whereas those were life-like, Beardsley's illustrations seemed far more interpretive.

Module 6 Blog Post

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

Today, along with several of my other classmates, I had the pleasure of presenting and analyzing an image from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. What I most enjoyed about this class was how the atmosphere of collective discussion ended up highlighting and emphasizing points of interest in the text, image, and context that I (as a presenter) had not previously considered. For example, in my question - which touched on visual cues - I had not considered the shading in the image as significant until Dr. Kooistra and my other classmates mentioned it.

Blog Post - Week #5

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

I found this week to be especially interesting because, rather than analyzing a story as I am so used to doing, I was simply asked to research and relay the technical details of my rendition of Christina Rosetti's Goblin Market. What I found so interesting about this was how my rendition had been altered in relation to its original publication, in order to suit its intended child audience.

Blog Post - Oct 1, 2020

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

This week, we looked at the poem "The Lady of Shalott", and had a chance to annotate parts of it individually, and then together, for the image portion of the text. My group annotated William Holman Hunt's illustration for the text; this image is a wood-engraved framed inset illustration, denoted by the linear border that surrounds it on the page. What I found most fascinating about this image is how it essentially encapsulates the entirety of the poem.

Blog Post #3

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

This week's lesson focused once more on image-and-text interplay; however, there was an emphasis on annotation for the purpose of illuminating various aspects of the text to the reader. What I found most interesting about this class was the process of annotating itself. Annotating requires not only an understanding of a certain word or literary convention - it requires the writer to understand these elements within the context of the text that they are annotating.

Week 2 Blog Response

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

For today's class, my group was assigned to give an overview of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Though I have read some of Doyle's work before, I have never seen it in its original illustrated format. I found this to be particularly fascinating because the images work to bring the text to life, and - in my opinion - help solidify Sherlock Holmes as the iconic fictional character he continues to be today.

Blog Response - September 10, 2020

Submitted by Alexandra Monstur on

As someone who prefers written work over visual work, I'll admit that I am intrigued to see how this class will expand my perspective on the illustrative aspect of Victorian texts. I don't normally focus on visual images in relation to reading or understanding literature, so this class is going to challenge me in a new way. Knowing that the texts we will be studying were geared towards adults is also intriguing to me, as I commonly associate illustrated books with a child audience.

Subscribe to RSS - Alexandra Monstur's blog