While creating annotations for Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” I struggled to find a word or phrase that was unusual or unfamiliar to me and worthy of annotation. Because the text is extremely visual, the “content” annotation was much more difficult to procure than the “craft” annotation. My “craft” annotation was “Tirra lirra;” at first, I thought this phrase would be perfect for a “content” annotation because it was an unfamiliar phrase. I then decided it was more suited for a “craft” annotation because of its rhyme and rhythm. Once my research proved that there was no literal meaning to the phrase and that it is meant to imitate a musical sound, I realized it was better suited to be categorized as “craft.” Unfortunately, I appear unable to view my classmate’s annotations’; I shall continue to explore COVE and attempt to resolve the issue. When I began exploring this week’s material, I...
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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
Annotating “The Lady Shallot” and its associated illustrations this week presented a unique challenge for me in that I struggled to balance and condense all of the many facets of history and culture that surrounded the production of the poem. With the “Lady of Shallot” for example, it was difficult to attempt to condense the cultural context of wood-engraving and mass production, the Pre-Raphaelites’ influence on art and illustration, the societal tensions regarding the emerging women’s rights movement—all seemingly pertinent to Tennyson’s poem and Rosetti and Hunt’s illustrations. It occurs to me that this is perhaps the core struggle of a synchronic mode of analysis: sifting through all of the historical and cultural contexts of a texts production and trying to situate a work within its broader, contemporary culture. Especially when trying to annotate, where the goal is to be as succinct as possible.
Though it...
moreThis week, our focus was Lord Alfred Tennyson's 'Lady of Shalott' which is includes aspects of Arthurian legend. I learned that the poem was in print for 25 years before the 1857 version was published with its illustrations by William Holman Hunt and Daniel Gabriel Rossetti. Our focus today was to make meaning between the originally published poem and its accompanying illustrations. Naturally, my mind gravitated towards understanding women in the cultural moment of the Victorian era; which delegated them to their homes to protect their chastity and sensibilities. However, it wasn't enough to create meaning. Professor Janzen mentioned crinolines or hoop skirts, skeletal garments that women wore under their dresses to make them voluminous and keep their shape. Connecting this idea that while women took up physical space in public, through poems like 'Lady of Shallot', women were being confined within the bounds of these poems as passive, chaste figures whose deaths depict them as...
moreI really enjoyed the process of annotating “The Lady of Shalott” and the two illustrations by different Pre-Raphaelite artists. I was even more so intrigued with the poem in compaison to the other works we have looked at. It was so easy to read and felt like it the analyzing came extremely naturally and allowed for soem great food for thought. I annotated a piece in Part IV that was talking about the blood freezing within the Lady of Shalott and her mournful singing. That piece of the poem held some really vivid and dark imagery that was breathtaking to read. Interpretating the images was extremely rewarding as well but for myself personally, the poem was my favourite that we have looked at thus far. I feel as thought my perosnaly intermretation of the images and text were very much so aligned with the perspectives of my peers, but being able ot hear others perspective is very important to me so I can grasp the best understanding that I can of the images and...
moreIn performing annotations for both image and text there were a number of things that I found particularly engaging both within the text and the context of “The Lady of Shalott”. Firstly, I will say that I found the text itself to be incredibly engaging. This is the first poem that we have studied in this course and I found the medium to be one that I particularly enjoyed. The way in which Tennyson was able to weave together a narrative while retaining the flow of his poetry was impressive. With regard to the content itself I particularly enjoyed the references to Arthurian legend that were made throughout the text. The comparisons between the idealized Camelot and Victorian era england are something that I find interesting if not mildly controversial. Furthermore I found that the poetry format really lent itself well to the creation of illustration as the language used throughout was incredibly dense both symbolically and thematically. With regard to...
moreThis 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. Understanding the image within its historical context helped to illuminate the broader interpretation of the poem. Knowing that the period in which the poem was written was one in which women were constrained by the mores of their society speaks to how The Lady is herself trapped by her weaving materials within the photo. This understanding is furthered by the contrasting reflections of Sir Lancelot in one mirror alongside the image of Jesus' crucifixion. As was touched upon in class...
moreI enjoyed doing the annotations on content and craft last week, but I felt as though doing them for “The Lady of Shalott” proved to be very helpful. I often struggle to understand poetry, therefore it was helpful to have the opportunity to take a close look into the text. I also enjoyed listening to what my group members had to say, but also being able to see what other students wrote for the parts we were not assigned to. We were assigned the first image by WHH, therefore there were a lot of details that I did not notice. Her hair was very unruly and took up a large portion of the page, but when I first saw the image I thought that was a ceiling design which altered the feel of the image a little.
Learning about the context of the time period was helpful in understanding the message that might have been trying to come through. I think women’s issues were very significant during this time, therefore I do...
moreAnnotating "The Lady of Shalott" was an engaging process. Tennyson layers references and commentary on the social position of women and their lack of social mobility. The first impression of the poem is the base description of the Lady falling to her doom through her attraction to Lancelot. However, there are more intricate details within the poem that come to light through a focused critical analysis. The text is rife with allusions but what I enjoyed most was the symbols of the constrained life of the Lady of Shalott.
In William Holman Hunt's interpretation, the isolation of the Lady is exaggerated through her immediate physical bonds (the wool that she is weaving around herself) and those that have been imposed upon her by external forces in the form of her tower. This is superimposed by smothering guilt in the illustrations within her chamber. The frame to the left seems to depict shields (representing the work of the state to protect her), the frame on the right depicts...
moreThis week's class was once again focused on the text-image relationship but it was also very much focused on the weekly reading which gave great historical context on illustrators and how they went about illustrating their images. For example, as mentioned in class, the poem itself was published 25 years before its illustrations were released which not only shows how popular the poem was 2 decades after its releas, but also how the ilustrators grew up reading the poem since childhood. Therefore, the poem's illustration is a mix of the illustrator's childhood envisionment of the poem, and their analetical perspective towards the poem 2 decades later.
A striking point that really piqued my interest in teh first illustration was how giant the Lady of Shalott looked in her tower. I think that was a great way to symbolize how little space there is for her physically and mentally as she imagines the outside world and how it looks like. Furtheremore, understanding the historical...
moreThe scene of The Lady of Shallot that intrigued me the most is when she first begins looking at Sir Lancelot through the mirror, and the idea of her desiring him in a possibly romantic and/or sexual way is introduced. I found this scene most intriguing because of the nature of how it is written tied into her character - The Lady of Shallot is trapped, and as such she is presented to the readers as a character that is unable to act upon her desires since she cannot leave the tower. The very act of her looking at Sir Lancelot through the mirror can be read as going against the expectations that are set out for her, since it is her gaze that causes her to act out of the established norm as the poem progresses. The image that my group curated, which was the Hunt illustration of the Lady herself, was exemplary of this scene and placed the illustrators own ideas (based on the time of which they were being curated) onto the scene. It depicts the Lady as being one that, although trapped,...
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Individual Entries
The discussion seminars really helped in understanding the context in which Sherlock Holmes has been written and its implications in modern society. It’s interesting but also disappointing to see that the racial ideologies really impact an illustrator (and author’s) writing, but it makes sense. The fact that England had the whole desire of wanting exotic Eastern cultures but to keep them (and constantly remind them) of their “savagery” and “inferiority” to England really is something to research into. In regard to our own culture, it still plays heavily in the assumption of who is deemed the villain or the criminal—there’s a prejudice within the police system that paints BIPOC people as doing something “deviant” or indecent and therefore paint their whole image on trying to prove that bias. It’s sad to know that it had been a constant issue that hadn’t seemed to change much even as time progressed. The illustrations also helps, though, in understanding...
moreSomething that occurred to me as we discussed Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is that these detective stories are functionally conservative texts. That is, the texts are concerned with maintaining a white, middle-class hegemony in Victorian England amidst a time of rapid cultural upheaval as they approach the turn of the century. Holmes figures into this as the ideal British subject (white, male, middle-class, English, rational) who regularly defends the other ideal British female subject from encroaching threats of the Other, whether that be the racialized/exoticized Other that we say in the “Speckled Band”, or the impoverished, fallen man as seen in the “Man with the Twisted Lip.” In both of these texts, Holmes is the one who is shown to defeat, bring to justice, or else “correct” the threat of the Other in the British homeland. In “The Speckled Band,” the oriental Other is literally defeated as Holmes safely contains...
moreI enjoyed listening to the different perspectives of my peers during today's presentations. I often do not gravitate to mystery stories, therefore it was interesting to read the story and look at the images associated with it. One interesting thing I noticed was how Sidney Paget often used his images to express ideologies within their society at the time. For example, the image of the beggar man from “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” called him a “professional beggar.” This is significant because it alludes to the idea that poor people choose to be poor, that they are too lazy to contribute to society in a meaningful way. This is an idea that is still very relevant in society today, as people often forget about other factors that contribute to homelessness. His illustrations also brought forth gender relations and female agency, such as when Mrs. St. Clair is being grabbed by the opium den owner. This is important because it demonstrates how women are...
moreIn today's class we discussed Sherlock Holmes, the iconic detective figure in the The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. We specifically discussed Sidney Paget's illustration of the text in The Man with the Twisted Lip" and "The Adventures of the Speckled Band" and how it worked with both the Victorian context and the text itself to create meaning. The discussions were informative as they opened my eyes to a variety of visual cues that I had not noticed. For example, in the vignette "At the foot of the stairs she met this Lascar scoundrel," it was interesting to see the black and white imagery that alluded to the gothic, mysterious and the unknown world of the "exotic" that was highlighted by placing dark shades of black behind the Southeast Asian character while placing bright white shades around the Victorian European women. The use of light and dark imagery to illustrate the British attitudes towards non-European people was astonishing and I wondered whether Paget included...
moreToday, 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. Just touching on that one detail allowed for the discussion to be opened even further; to me, this highlighted just how necessary the contributive process of discussion can be in relation to individualized research.
What I also found interesting was how effective images are at portraying/expressing contemporary attitudes that surround the literary context. Through image analysis alone, we were able to explore...
moreSpecifically in "The Man With the Twisted Lip," the contrast between a text and its imge become obvious, as do the fin-de-siecle ideologies that both represent. In the image of the man that is described as being a "professional begger," ideologies surrounding homelessness and disability are represented, refecting common stereotypes around both that were common in society at the time of illustrtion and publication. Beginning with depictions of homelessness, Sidney Paget, although steering away from the description in the text that paints the man as monsrous and villanous, he upholds common stereotype with his use of dark and light imagery as well as facial expression. There is darkness surrounding the homeless man who the readers do not yet know, and his facial expression makes him appear helpless to the viewers. The dark energy that seems to be surrounding him furthers the idea that this character is the villain of the tale, and makes this idea known to readers. The same is true...
moreEdward Moxon and Co. Publishing Firm was a former British publishing company located in London, England, that was founded by Edward Moxon. The publishing company was particularly renowned for publishing lavishly illustrated books and illustrated versions of already notable Victorian literature. In particular, the work of Alfred Tennyson, with which the publishing company had built a working relationship that spanned close to thirty years. Previously, they had published several volumes of his work which spawned many editions, including Poems, The Princess, In Memoriam, and Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington....
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