While working on the annotations today for A Christmas Carol I got to thinking specifcially about how much in text goes over the mind. When you read a text so many times your mind goes at a spead that if you brush over a word that is not fully familiar to you it does not phase your reading. The activity we did today allowed us to individually slowly analyze the text and grab further context on the victorian era. I felt that looking through the annotations made my peers I was so much more informed on certain phrases and meaning. What I appreciated about looking through the illustrations is the way in which the tone is portrayed in each scene despite the lack of technology. You would think because of the lack of tecnological advancement the pictures would lack the elements that todays illustrations have but there is so much detail that the wood engravings that make them very complementary to the text. For example the last wood illustration in stave 5 manages to carry a...
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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.
Individual Entries
I found this week’s focus on John Leech’s artwork for A Christmas Carol flooded with social commentary. In our group discussion we analyzed an illustration of Mr.Fezziwig from Ebinezer Scrooge’s paranormal encounter with the ghost of his past. As we analyzed the steel plate etching, we noted the detailed images of Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig for being more vibrant and “jovial” in contrast to the other characters around them. We concluded that the illustration was a direct visual interpretation of the upper class, which bordered on mockery. One of the distinct features about the novella is its use of both steel plate etching and wood engravings throughout the story. With the steel plate, Leech was able to incorporate colour in his illustration. In keeping with the direction of my group's conversation, I felt that the use of colour was an added extension of his mockery. The...
moreA point of interest for me this week was learning more about the historical context Dickens was writing in. Learning more about the material conditions of the Victorian working poor during the 1840s added a new layer of appreciation for the text. References to the “Poor Law” and the “Treadmill” in the first stave completely went over my head in my initial reading. It is clear to me now that Dickens was thinking about the conditions of working class people as he was writing A Christmas Carol, but also had a keen sense of his middle class audience. I suspect that Scrooge’s initial worldview—that human life and society is subordinate to profit and wealth—is reflective of the general attitudes of the capitalist class during the 1840s. In this way, I read A Christmas Carol as a cautionary tale to a presumed middle- to high-class audience about the repercussions of material greed on their immortal soul, and that encourages them to be more charitable in there...
moreWhat particularly interested me the most about annotating Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was reading the textual version of the story. When reading the graphic novel, I was able to visualize what events were happening but was not even as much of an in-depth analysis of the text. This way, I was able to consider specific sentences and words that were used in a deeper way, allowing me to see more characterization, themes, and settings. This method of reading the text also helped me understand John Leech’s illustrations. The use of light in the story is incredibly symbolic and is commonly present in the illustrations. This is a reference to Scrooge being referred to as darkness, or prefers the dark, numerous times within the text. The differences between the illustrations that were woodcut and the others was incredibly interesting to view the detail between them.
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...
moreI found it interesting how disparate Leech's illustrations for A Christmas Carol are (so much so that I assumed they were done by different artists upon first reading it) in terms of style, method, and tone. Stylistically, the illustrations range (depending on tone, it seems) from particularly caricature-esque and cartoony to more Gothic and realist -- "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball" and "Scrooge's Third Visitor" examples of the former style, and "Last of the Spirits" and the woodcut from the second stave examples of the latter stlye. Methodically, the mix of steel-engraving and wood-engraving illustrations in a single work is interesting to me; I wonder how often in this era different methods were used for one book. The different methods seem to compliment the disparate styles and tones as well, as the steel-engraving method facillitates the lighter, caricature style illustrations while the wood-cuts facillitate the darker, realist illustrations. Tonally, the diversity obviously...
moreWhat I found particularly poignant about John Leech’s work on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is how each illustration brimmed with symbolism and countless interpretations which expanded upon the original text in ways I wasn’t initially aware of. During the annotation and discussion process, I observed various details that were incredibly engaging to look and featured plenty to analyze. In general, Leech's work was especially entertaining because of his caricature-like style which allowed him to address many social issues with a whimsical manner that was both humorous and child-like but also indicative of larger societal expectations permeating throughout. For instance, my group was assigned to work on Stave 2, and I found Leech’s emphasis on certain characters in this chapter particularly poignant. One example is with his choice to distinguish Mr. and Mrs....
moreAlthough A Christmas Carol is such a popular well-known text, I hadn't read it before this class. Sure, I'd seen the movies during Christmas time and I know of the story but I hadn't paid much attention to it let alone the illustrations. I really enjoyed how the story was written. I was interested in Dickens's use of descriptive writing without seeming like he's droning to fill up space. I liked how he made references to other texts such as Hamlet and spoke to the reader instead of at them. I specifically found how he described Scrooge interesting. He made these references to Scrooge's care for Marley and showed Scrooge as sentimental and caring but then, as we know, Scrooge would turn back around and be horrible to those around him. While I knew the story had illustrations, I had never seen them before. It was interesting to learn about the different types of illustrations and mediums used and how they didn't hold a specific theme. Some...
moreToday's lecture focused on Charles Dickens' infamous novella, A Christmas Carol. Although, the text is quite popular with its various adaptations, I have never actually read the actual text before taking this course. One of the most interesting things I noticed while annotating this particular text is that Dickens has a fondness for flowery writing and can go on endlessly describing whatever he is focusing on. As a result, I came across lots of words that I did not know or had different connotations in the 1840s versus now. One such word was: apoplectic which means extremely angry or indignant. Another thing that I found interesting was that in terms of present adaptations are relatively faithful to Dickens' vision (atleast in my opinion). John Leech's illustrations were striking and very beautiful, especially the image, "The Third Visitor"; this is likely due to its vibrant colours in comparison to the other images. I appreciated the effort and skill needed to create...
moreFor today’s class we were tasked with annotating Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol and working with John Leech’s illustrations for the novella. I found it surprising to learn that illustrations were included with the book when it was first published. This adds to the importance of looking at image, text and context in relation to each other. It was also interesting to learn about the different types of drawings Leech created for the novella and discuss as a class the impact of these illustrations. Who knew that there was so much detailed information online just about the illustrations! When it came time to annotating the text, I found it easy to write about the craft of the story because I’ve spent so much time practicing this type of analysis in school that it was easy to comment. As for the content annotation, I found it a little more challenging because it meant looking for detail within the text to highlight that would require pursuing further research to truly...
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