Tenniel's Advantages
1989; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/chq.0.0749
ISSN1553-1201
Autores Tópico(s)Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
ResumoTenniel's Advantages Jane Doonan (bio) Hancher, Michael . The Tenniel Illustrations to the 'Alice' Books. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985. "Forty two illustrations by Tenniel! Why there needs nothing else to sell this book, one would think." So ran an early review of the work of a virtually unknown author, Mr. Lewis Carroll, and his collaborator, who was one of the most popular artists in England. In the intervening years, Lewis Carroll's excellent piece of nonsense, as the Times first described it, has been translated into more than fifty different languages, and has appeared in over two thousand editions. Lewis Carroll's fame has prompted hundreds of critical studies of his art and life, whereas John Tenniel's fame has hardly been examined. Michael Hancher's aim is partially to right the balance by giving sustained attention to Tenniel's role in creating the Alice books. Carroll's choice of Tenniel as his professional illustrator led to the creation of a complete work of art with parity of word and image. How did they achieve this? Why are Tenniel's illustrations inextinguishable in the memory; how technically did he re-create psychologically part of the same world as the world of the text; why is Tenniel's visual narrative unlikely to be equalled and cannot be bettered? Hancher answers such questions in The Tenniel Illustrations to the 'Alice' Books, a lucidly written account of Tenniel's advantages which no contemporary artist will be able to match. Hancher reveals how the Alice books truly are period pieces. They are not traditional tales which are timeless and universal. Alice herself is a very Victorian character and so are her animals. Hancher focusses on three areas of interest. The first chapters present two general frames of reference: Tenniel's work as staff cartoonist for Punch and its effects on the illustrations, and Lewis Carroll's own illustrations for the original manuscript of Alices Adventures under Ground. The central chapters concentrate on details of illustration in the Alice books. The final chapters return to general considerations: the nature of the Carroll-Tenniel collaboration; the practical and aesthetic conditions of Victorian woodblock illustration, and the problematic relation of illustration and text; the merits of the original layout of the Alice books. Alice's Adventures is almost as much about animals as it is about Alice. Carroll chose Tenniel to be his collaborator because he admired the latter's illustrations for a version of Aesop's Fables, published in 1848—a book which confirmed Tenniel's reputation as an illustrator and led to his appointment two years later to the art staff of Punch, the leading 'establishment' humour journal. Tenniel had originally been inspired by the grotesqueries drawn by J.J. Grandville for the French journal, Charivari, and whose works—Fables de La Fontaine, Scènes de la Vie Privée et Publique des Animaux, and Un Autre Monde—are replete with humanised and fashionably dressed animals, and inanimate objects bearing life. Grandville's wood engravings for the Fables of 1838 came out in England in 1843, pre-dating Tenniel's Aesop by five years. This is an intriguing French connection with Hancher merely mentions, leaving his readers to explore further should they so wish, and it is just one example of the many leads which make this particular book so rich. Victorian readers, at the publication of Alice, would have found much therein familiar, having been granted frequent previews of Wonderland images drawn for Punch by Tenniel and his colleagues on the staff. Hancher offers examples of how Tweedledum and Tweedledee resemble Punch cartoons about John Bull, and that their saucepan combat hats recall the supposed mock heroics of the Chartist movement, as they were interpreted for Punch by John Leech. The well known image of the caterpillar smoking his hookah is an amalgam of tilts at the Papacy by both Tenniel and Leech, and Father William does his headstand in a hayfield formerly occupied by Mr. Punch and his family in the summer of '56. There are many, many more mirrorings, including figures very like Alice herself, in various guises. In Hancher's chapter on the Carroll illustrations for Alice's...
Referência(s)