Blog Post #3

I 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.

Module 3

Although 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.

ENG 910: English Capstone Seminar: Week Three

   Today'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.

ENG 910: Week Three Blog Post

For 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.

Blog Post #3

This week's lesson focused once more on image-and-text interplay; however, there was an emphasis on annotation for the purpose of illuminating various aspects of the text to the reader. What I found most interesting about this class was the process of annotating itself. Annotating requires not only an understanding of a certain word or literary convention - it requires the writer to understand these elements within the context of the text that they are annotating.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x John Leech

 I found it very fulfilling to be able to look at A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens and Illustrated by John Leech today in class with my fellow peers. I have read/seen all different types of versions of A Christmas Carol as a result of just simply growing up. To call it a classic is an understatement, but to be able to study it in a university class this semester is a full circle moment. The images curated by John Leech have extreme depth and they have the capacity to be analyzed to great lengths.

Blog Post #3 || Sept 24th || Module 3

I found that collectively annotating A Christmas Carol was an interesting experience because it really brought numerous minds together and enriched the concepts and the novella even more so. I personally liked how annotating and researching about the image further reveals things that I haven’t really noticed or paid attention to prior—the significant details put into things.

Response Blog 3 (Sept 24)

In creating annotation for Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, I was most interested in the craft annotation.  It is simple enough to look up a word or phrase we do not understand and give it context; the annotations for literary aspects are more subjective for creativity and interpretation.  For example, my content annotation was on “coach-and-six,” an expression unfamiliar to me.

Blog Post #3: September 24th

This week, we looked at A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, spending a considerable amount of time working with the various illustrations by John Leech. I found it really informative and helpful going over the images as a class and talking about how Leech used the images to create his own interpretation of Dickens’ words. I am definitely not well-versed in the world of art, so analyzing illustrations like we did today in order to find some deeper meaning was really difficult for me.

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