This is a combination of various student analyses on
different artist’s interpretation of Goblin
Market a poem written by Christina Rossetti. The site was born out of an
assignment for English 151W a writing intensive course offered at Queens
College. Below are brief introductions
from the students who compiled their analyses together, and brought to you this
site. The site navigation is broken down into various pages: Home being this
page that serves as an introduction and credit holder, Poem which houses Goblin Market both in audio and textual
form, followed by individual pages for each artist that was analyzed. We hope
you thoroughly enjoy our analyses as well as be captivated by the artistry
contained within these pages.
The Students
Li Dai
I am very grateful to be able to gather this team of five, which I call it the "Team Awesome" in our private e-mails. Everybody has done their parts to make this project possible. My main work was the analyses of Kinuko Craft's and Frank Craig's illustrations. I picked the former one just to fit in the male stereotype of all times. Which it did help me to focus on every little detail on the picture. As I'm sure you'll agree once you read my analyses. On the other hand, Frank Craig's illustration is very conservative compared to Kinuko's work. But they both have their own unique styles of illustrating the poem. I sure hope you'll enjoy the illustrations as well as our analyses.
Rebecca Colon
My name is Rebecca Colon and like my classmates, I too am a current Queens College student. My responsibilities were more towards the site’s functionality and look, but I also analyzed Laurence Housman’s wood block illustrations. The reason why I chose his specific illustrations was because I enjoyed his rendition of the goblins the most. They were also wood block images so the amount of artistry needed to chip away at the block to create such a crisp image is simply impressive. I hope you enjoy my analysis of Housman’s interpretation and may it guide you in looking past the words of the poem in your own reading and analysis.
Mayra Espinal
As previously stated this is a project for a
class that my peers and I have created to make it a bit easier for anyone
analyzing Christina Rossetti’s Goblin
Market and the various illustrations published for this poem. My name is
Mayra Espinal and I currently attend Queens College in NYC. I chose to
elaborate upon John Bolton’s illustrations because I really enjoyed his views
and more modern comic book take on Goblin
Market. As you will see, everyone has their own interpretation for this
poem and it helps to know a little background on the period when the poem and
these illustrations were published and of course, it will also help to know a
brief description of the artist. I hope this is useful for everyone! I do not
hold a PhD in English or Literature, I am simply interpreting what I see, as
everyone
should too! Happy interpreting! :)
Chelsea Blackman
Hello everyone and welcome to our site. My classmates and I have worked diligently on this project so I hope you've found any of the information provided useful for whatever you may need it for. My name is Chelsea Blackman and I am currently a Sophomore at CUNY Queens College. I chose to expand more on the illustrations by Dante Rossetti. Since I am a Graphic Design major, I'm required to take art history courses, and in the course I'm currently taking, Nineteenth Century European Art, I've learned much about Dante Rossetti and felt the most comfortable working with him since I already knew of him. I loved his art work and found them intriguing so that gave me further incentive to analyze his illustrations. Enjoy!
I am happy that I could be part of a project that will make it easier for people to study the various artist interpretations of a poem that I enjoyed reading. For me, the beauty of this poem resides in the contrast between the nursery rhyme sounding rhythm and the dark subject matter as well as the discrepancies over what the lesson of the poem is. I decided to interpret Arthur Rackham's illustrations. The backgrounds of Arthur Rackham's illustrations, specifically the prominence of the trees and the life in the trees, interested me. I hope you enjoy reading how I interpreted Arthur Rackham's artistic decisions.