Firstly, I must say that I am shocked to find that it is the end of the semester already. How time flies! Looking back on all of the texts we have studied, I can say that my appreciation for Victorian literature, as well as my capacity for analysis, has greatly grown. It seems the course is reaching a satisfying denouement as we now turn to A Christmas Carol once again.

I found it very perplexing how my conception of A Christmas Carol differed significantly from the beginning of the semester compared to my later analysis of the graphic novel version. It was almost as if I was reading two completely different stories, just by the way they were illustrated! It really speaks towards the way modern illustration has evolved in a manner that is dynamic and visually-arresting. Not only with the more well-rounded colour palette, but the way in which depictions of the ghosts and the supernatural was cleverly illustrated.

In comparing Victorian illustrated books with contemporary graphic novels, I found it interesting to consider how the simultaneity between the text and images of the latter and the non-simultaneity of the text and images of the latter contributes to how each medium projects meaning. Earlier in the course, I've found it interesting how illustrations in Victorian books often anticipate the textual scenes they are depicting, leaving the reader to essentially predict how the illustration they are looking at fits into the story.

I found myself very excited today after the lecture. In group discussions I got the opportunity to converse about Goblin Market and discuss the different angles being taken on the Illustrated novel. I was able to share my ideas and talk to classmates about their presentations as well. I had a few curiosities surrounding the project and was glad to talk to the other people working on the same text and illustrations to help me out. Overall I gained insight onto more of the dialogue surrounding Goblin Market.

I’ve started working on my capstone project this week, and I’m very excited to get further into my research to create my digital exhibit. After class today, Lorraine walked those of us who are using COVE for our projects through the creation of a gallery exhibit and it got me very excited to start working with the platform. We ran into some problems with inserting images, but thankfully Emma was able to find us a workaround to solve that problem! 

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.