With this weeks activity of building a gallery to showcase the various editions of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, I learned a lot more about pictures themselves and their contexts, and further how their contexts influence the way that they represent a given text. For example, my group was asked to curate the illustrations of Laurence Housman, and through research I was able to discover that he made the original illustrations for the first published edition, meaning that they were less of a personal interpretation and more of a reflection of the text. Despite this, I was also able to see the various themes that Housman invites readers to interpret into his images, and further how these images came to be when considering Housman's artistic background. One of the most noteable ideas I found through my research and my curation was that the images by Housman are inherently sexual and paint the charcters in Rossetti's poem as such, and that these same illustrations were the...
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Description
Students in Lorraine Janzen Kooistra's English Capstone Seminar at Ryerson University in Toronto in F2020 aim to make a virtue of pandemic necessity by engaging collaboratively and critically with the digital surrogates of a wide variety of Victorian illustrated books published between 1843 and 1899.
Using the interpretive model of image/text/context for both synchronic and diachronic analyses, and drawing on a range of digital tools, this course aims to understand the past through the present and the present through the past.
Our study begins with Charles Dickens's iconic Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas, illustrated by John Leech (1843), then turns to two examples of poetry and illustration: Alfred Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott," illustrated by Pre-Raphaelite artists William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1857); and Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," illustrated by her brother, Dante Gabriel (1862). These mid-century works will provide the foundation for our study of the illustrated books that proliferated at the end of the century. We'll analyze a variety of fin-de-siècle genres and styles, starting with Arthur Conan Doyle's popular detective stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, illustrated by Sydney Paget (1892). Next up is Salome: A Tragedy in One Act, Oscar Wilde's censored play based on a biblical story, which was infamously "embroidered" by decadent artist Aubrey Beardsley (1894). Fairy tales and fantasies aimed at adult audiences allowed counter-cultural writers and artists to protest existing norms and imagine other worlds; our examples are Laurence Housman's self-illustrated collection, The House of Joy (1895) and Clemence Housman's gothic novella The Were-Wolf, with wood-engraved illustrations by the author after her brother Laurence's designs (1896). The Annancy Stories, a self-illustrated collection of folktales by Pamela Colman Smith, is the first-known publication featuring this Jamaican trickster figure (1899). Students examine the final work, A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel (2019), for evidence of the legacy of Victorian illustrated books today.
The following texts are available in COVE (see D2L for the other digital surrogates):
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas (1843): A COVE Studio Text for class annotation
Clemence Housman, The Were-Wolf (1896): A COVE Annotated Edition
Christina G. Rossetti, Goblin Market (1862): A COVE Annotated Edition
Alfred Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott (1857): A COVE Studio text for class annotation
Victorian illustrated books resulted from the collaboration of a number of social agents, including authors, artists, engravers, editors, publishers, and readers. Using the COVE toolset, students and instructor work collaboratively to build resources that critically curate Victorian illustrated books in cultural contexts ranging from the nineteenth century to the present.
We will use the COVE annotation tool to hone our close reading and editorial skills. In COVE Studio, each student will provide TWO TEXTUAL ANNOTATIONS, one on "content," one on "craft," for Dickens's A Christmas Carol and Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott."
We will use the Gallery Image tool to provide bibliographic and contextual information and iconographic commentary and analysis on illustrations, and to associate these with events in the Timeline and places in the Map.
We will use the Gallery Exhibition tool to critically curate illustrated books in cultural contexts, situating works synchronically, within their originating moment of production and reception, and diachronically, in terms of their ongoing moments of production and reception.
We will use the COVE Timeline tool to provide information about historical events relevant to Victorian illustrated books, both at the time of their first publication, and in their ongoing re-production over time and across media.
We will use the COVE Map tool to associate places relevant to illustrated books and their makers and the cultural contexts that we showcase in the Gallery and on the Timeline.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
What interested me this week when exploring Goblin Market once again was the wide range of variations of the text. I specifically focused on the illustrations that were done by George Gershinwitz in "The Chlldren's Rossetti," Christina Rossetti and Illustration. I learned particularly in my edition that the themes were originally aimed for children, but due to their erotic themes they were then more marketed towards adults. This surprised me due to the common assumption that picture books would be produced for a younger demographic. The theme of fantasy was also common in these texts, using bright watercolour illustrations to help the reader follow along easier. Looking at the variations of the text over time not only show the historical importance around the Goblin Market, but how it can be incredibly versatile. It was able to be reconstructed and reprinted numerous times with different illustrators in order to be adapted for different audiences. The...
moreI enjoyed building the editions and renditions of “Goblin Market” in Cove. I was assigned to group four, in which we looked at “Goblin Market,” in the form of children’s books. I looked at Martin Ware’s rendition, in which I was very interested to see the how his images appeared to be very frightening and graphic. While using the secondary source, I was able to discover that he creates independently of the intended audience, therefore he did not create the images specifically for child consumption. I enjoyed this exercise because I was able to see how the poem has evolved through time, ultimately being part of the genre that is popular at the time. By this I mean that “Goblin Market” as a sexual fantasy was popularized in the 70s, when sex was at the forefront of culture. Overall, my experience with the poem has not changed, I just feel as though I am now more open to different meanings while I engage with it. When I first read the poem, I automatically thought it was about a young...
moreToday I had the pleasure of looking into the edition of Christina G. Rossetti's Goblin Market with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. With the assistance of Dr. Janzen, I was able to learn that this was not only marketed as a childern's book, but also a collectors piece. I found that extremely interesting, but not surprising, because I am always looking out for the classic children book's of my childhood, to collect and keep and use and display one day , god willling, when I have children of my own. I can understand the market for this book in this sense. I know the degree of collection that I have explained for myself is much less prestigious than true book collectors, but I definetly came to a grand appreciation for this edition that I chose to curate. This excersice taught me that Goblin Market was so much more than just a book, and it was osmething that was loved and it was loved over and over again by new generations of readers and...
moreI really enjoyed looking at all the different renditions of Christina Rosetti's Goblin Market. I found it really interesting how meaning can be manipulated and the audience reconfigured through illustrations. I found it useful to curate a specific image from an early 20th-century edition as it is good practice for our upcoming Cove assignment. I really enjoyed this week's week, The Modern Market for Goblin Market. It was fascinating to me how the meaning of the poem changed over time while the actual text of the poem did not. I was surprised to learn that for the longest time it was considered a text for children. I had never made that connection before the reading and studying the illustrated edition by Margaret Tarrant definitely helped me understand the perception of Goblin Market as a fairy tale for children. In her version, the meaning of the poem was completely manipulated through Tarrant's use of child-like characters and innocent-looking dwarves...
moreI found the process of annotating "The Lady of Shalott" very interesting for two main reasons. The first was seeing how our various groups missed a particular reading of the poem. Many of us understood the poem to highlight the restraint and restrictions placed upon women of the Victorian Era, and their desire to escape it. However, as mentioned both in lecture and in one of the research resources provided, another common reading of the poem is through the eyes of an artist, who questions whether isolation is necessary for their art. I found it interesting that we all contributed different ideas to further one particular reading, but that we did not reach other popular readings in our annotations. The other thing I found interesting was trying to apply the synchronous model to these annotations and interpretations. Often when interpreting a text, I often would look at how its themes are applied to a general context. Applying very specific aspects of a single year like 1857, such as...
moreFor today’s class we looked at Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and two illustrations for the poem. We were tasked with annotating the poem in the same way we annotated A Christmas Carol last week. The challenge that came after was looking at the two illustrations and try to make meaning of it using the image/text/context method. Since the poem was published about 25 years before the illustrations were made, the artists already had some previous exposure to the text before making their drawings. There was a lot happening in 1857 when the illustrations were published. The emerging women’s right movement (one of the notable events) must have had an impact on the presentation of the Lady of Shalott. Each of these scenes depicted from the poem surprised me because the artists manage to go beyond the words in the poem and create an image that they think suits the poem. “The Lady of Shalott” does include imagery but it is very limited therefore the artist must use their...
moreI really enjoyed our discussion on the images in Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” this week. One thing my group talked about a lot that was particularly intriguing to me was how much the illustrations’ placement influences our reading of the text. I hadn’t looked at the images before reading the poem for the first time, and because of that, the first stanzas felt like an almost Rapunzel-like romanticization of the Lady of Shalott’s isolation. It wasn’t until the third section of the poem that I really got a taste of her madness. However, the wood-engraving by William Holman Hunt that precedes the text in the illustrated version depicts her madness before you even start reading the text, completely changing how I interpreted those beginning stanzas. Now that I had known the ending of the poem, I was finding all of these hints towards her madness in the first two parts of the poem that I hadn’t realized were there my first reading. I imagine if I had seen the images before my...
moreI’ve always had a particular fascination with the art of William Holman Hunt and the careful delineation of detail that his work often encompasses, but his art piece for the Lady of Shalott that was viewed in class today was something else entirely. The namesake Lady in question is entangled in her own cords and looms and her face is intense with expression. To me, it comes across that this is not a woman who has accepted her fate, but rather opposes it. This is a brave and brazen portrayal of femininity. She is standing upright, her hair flowing freely around her, and she is strong-jawed with alert eyes. Her height and stature in this piece distinguish her as the primary focus, giving her a sense of agency. Further, her taut posture is a rare depiction for women throughout art history, usually shown reclining or sleeping. Unlike the other pieces I had seen, this piece in particular emphasizes that she is not just a woman “half-sick of shadows”,...
moreI enjoyed annotating "The Lady of Shalott“ poem as it really added more information and considerations into a poem that has been read numerous times. It makes the experience more unique, so to speak. I hadn't really thought too deeply about the poem previously, save for the examination of its content generally. But to add it into the context of the Victorian period and understanding what influenced the illustrations - the pre-Raphelites, gender roles etc - it adds a whole new layer. The detail in the wood engravings was also pleasing to look at, seeing the effort and time it took into having it all done - I could really see the effort put into illustrations (how it naturally draws the eye into looking at the finer details of the art - the mirror, the way the Lady looks, the detail of each strand of hair).
I found it interesting how heavily the cultural context impacts the way an artist will do their illustration for a piece of literature. More specifically, how much...
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Individual Entries
Something I found interesting while studying Sidney Paget's illustrations for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories is how relatively un-interperative these illustrations are in comparison with the other illustrations we have looked at so far. Paget seems to pretty faithfully and uncontroversially reproduce the scenes Doyle lays out, with few real novel contributions regarding each scene's narrative. One obvious explanation for this is that Paget, unlike most of the other illustrators whose work we've studied so far, did not collaborate with or have to seek the approval of Doyle before publication. Perhaps this made Paget less willing to step too far out of the box in terms of how he represented the latter's stories, for fear of displeasing him. Obviously Paget did leave his own distinct mark on how Holmes' character is interpreted - the deerstalker hat, for instance - but these contributions are relatively mundane, likely within the creative sphere that Paget felt...
moreThe link between word and image always fascinates me and it especially fascinates me when we’re looking at literature from a completely different time from the time in which I have lived in my 20 years of life. The Sherlock Holmes' images that we looked at today were quite interesting mostly because of his story that the image told and contrast to the story that the words were telling. It was a great conversation to conduct throughout the class because of the input from all of the different perspectives coming from all the different people in my class. The most common themes that we looked at throughout the images were the contrast between light and dark imagery and how the way that the pictures were shadowed and highlighted actually told a lot about what was going on in the story which I thought was extremely important to noye. It was nice to have some emphasis on that because that is something that I do not necessarily consciously look at right away when looking at a photo. I...
moreThe class discussions about Sydney Paget’s illustrations for “The Man With the Twisted Lip” by Arthur Conan Doyle struck a lot of interesting thoughts for me. The most prominent image in my mind has to be the illustration of the “Lascar scoundrel”. Our discussion mostly followed the word “Lascar” in relation to the illustration, however I also found the following use of the word “scoundrel” just as intriguing. “Scoundrel” is used as an adjective to further alienate and/or discriminate against the man in the drawing. It suggests that he is a rogue, lying man. Another familiar use of the word, is “scoundrel” as a way to describe vermin. In Paget’s illustration, this imagery comes forward in the way that the man’s shoulders are pushed into his ears, and in the beastly interpretation of how he is pushing the woman away. His body language reads aggressively, and the way his limbs are positioned in contrast to the woman are loose and unpoised. ...
moreIn the popular Sherlock Holmes series image, text and context worked together to convey character interactions that help the reader to better understand the scene. When looking specifically at the story The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the black and white illustrations held several similarities that displayed the crime scenes and characters. They worked together to also show perhaps the social class of the characters, family life, and the race. The illustrations all depict specific moments in the narrative, allowing readers to better understand expressions and reactions to the scene. While these images may not provide the reader with further information about the plot of the story, they help with visualizing the context of the interaction. When looking at other volumes of Sherlock Holmes, such as The Adventure of the Blue Carnuncle, they all provide similar illustrations that consist of characters engaging with one another. The images for these texts all help the reader to...
moreThis week's seminar focused on the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories are beloved in the genre of detective stories. A product of its time, although not an adequate excuse, the stories are rife with racist stereotypes of BIPOC and portray women in a light where they lack little agency. In the story, 'The Man with the Twisted Lip', one of the character's is seen trying to enter an opium den to look for her husband, but is stopped by the owner in what is portrayed as a very violent way. The man is 'othered' as someone who hails from South-east Asia but is depicted as dark. Sidney Paget's own biases likely influenced this depiction, the notion that someone that was not white, was dangerous, especially to respectable women of the upper classes. This is furthered seen through the way that their clothes are depicted: the man is depicted in assumed to be traditional clothes, but comes off more like rags; while, the woman is wearing a dress...
moreToday's class offered some interesting insights on Sherlock Holmes and its cultural context. Sidney Paget's illustrations reveal an aspect of the stories that is concealed or even otherwise absent in the text. What interested me specifically was the empathy and humanity displayed in the illustrations of Holmes for "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."
In the illustration titled "She raised her veil" we commented on the absence of the deerstalker cap and pipe, symbols that have come to represent Holmes in popular culture due to Paget's influence. The absence of these symbols is a conscious choice but not as complex as it may appear. It would be a common courtesy to remove one's cap when in the presence of a woman (especially when indoors) and smoking was also coded as a male activity. This shows a basic consideration and respect towards Helen Stoner as befitting her rank and status. Considering the lack of authority that Helen had under her stepfather, this action of her...
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