Victorian Illustrated Books (ENG910 F2020) Dashboard
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.
Individual Entries
I 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”,...
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