In their recent monograph Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures and Through the Looking-Glass: A Publishing History (2016), American specialists of children‘s literature Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens offer a detailed and comprehensive documentation on the publishing history of Alice‘s books. The two authors pointed out correctly that the largest lacuna in the studies on Alice ―is the surprising neglect of the visual and illustration history surrounding these texts.‖15 The main reason for this
―surprising neglect‖ might be the fact that the studies on ―the visual and illustration‖
aspects of Carroll‘s books have long since been relatively lacking. Hence, there have been really little to say about ―the visual and illustration history surrounding these texts.‖
The basic monograph on the books‘ visual aspects, The Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass of 1972 by Graham Ovenden and John Davis, is a publication with the great ambition to gather and analyze 138 illustrations in total by about forty illustrators.16 The authors did not seize the opportunity to conduct a profound comparative analysis in order to underline the differences between the illustrators‘ approaches, but merely juxtaposed a huge number of illustrations. John Davis‘s 16-pages-introduction, thus, left most of the interpretation to the readers themselves. In a comparable way, author Stephanie Lovett Stoffel chose the illustrations for Carroll‘s book by 20 illustrators for The Art of Alice in
Wonderland, thus neglecting an in-depth discussion about the images and their illustrators. Even John Tenniel is mentioned only by the way.17
15 Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures and Through the Looking-Glass:
A Publishing History, New York: Routledge, 2016, p. 3.
16 Graham Ovenden and John Davis, The Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, New York: St Martin‘s Press, 1972.
17 Stephanie Lovett Stoffel, The Art of Alice in Wonderland, New York: Smithmark, 1998.
7
In his monograph The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books, Michael
Hancher presents an outstanding scholarly visual analysis of Tenniel‘s images.18 This book covers both Alice’s Adventures and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There. The author focuses on a great variety of topics, such as on the myth about the model for the protagonist Alice, the visual source of the Ugly Duchess, the borrowing and adaptation of the images for Alice‘s books from those drawn for Punch by Tenniel himself, a comparison between Tenniel‘s and Carroll‘s illustrations and those of other contemporaries, as well as the collaboration between Tenniel and Carroll in the making of the Alice‘s Books. The author also discusses extensively the narrative aspects of selected illustrations, though the analysis often remains on the surface. When concerning the aspect of time, for example, the author limits himself to the identification of the timing depicted in the given scene rather than advancing further to an analysis of the reasons why that timing is selected.19 The issue of the visual narrative is not the focus of Hancher‘s book.
―Narrative is the most vital element in literature for children, […]. Yet critical theory dealing with the narrative function of illustrations, as distinct from narrative elements in the text, is sadly lacking,‖ Stephen Roxburgh said in the mid-1980s.20 This observation rightly points out to the fact that specialists of illustrated books obviously put a clear focus on the text and neglected the illustrations. And, sadly enough, the situation hardly ever changed since then till today.21 This might explain why the narrative aspects of Tenniel‘s illustrations to Alice’s Adventures were often
18 Michael Hancher, The Tenniel Illustrations to the Alice Books, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1985.
19 See, for example, Hancher‘s discussion of the scene showing Alice and the Mouse in the pool of tears; Hancher (as note 18), p. 31.
20 Steven Roxburgh, ―A Picture Equals How Many Words: Narrative Theory and Picture Books for Children,‖ in: Lion and the Unicorn 7–8, 1983–84, pp. 20–33, here p. 20; see also Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books, Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1988, p. ix.
21 See Jaques (as note 15), p. 3.
8
touched, but have never been systematically explored. And, sometimes, a
misjudgment of Tenniel‘s illustrations happened when neglecting the narrative context.
For instance, Michael Hancher noted that Carroll‘s illustration of the scene Alice Stucked in the White Rabbit’s House ―has been praised, as compared to Tenniel‘s version […] for more powerfully evoking fetal claustrophobia.‖ (figs. 3–4).22 Hancher uncritically adopted this observation from William Empson and Donald Rackin.23 This supposition could be accepted, if only the illustration of Alice Stuck in the White Rabbit’s House were an independent drawing, isolated from the story‘s narrative context. According to the development of the plot, Alice ―went on growing, and as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the
chimney, and said to herself, ‗Now I can do no more, whatever happens.‘‖24
Checking with Carroll‘s illustration, in which there is no way for Alice to make any further move, for she ―has completely exhausted the available space.‖25 Then, how could this kind of representation correspond to the text about the immediate actions that Alice is going to perform, such as, to ―put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney?‖ As I have already said that a book illustration, as in this case, has primarily a narrative function. The scene depicted not only has to represent a selected moment as vividly as possible, but the illustrator must also consider what would happen next in the consecutive scenes, so that the actions in one scene could shift smoothly into another. This is exactly the point neglected in Carroll‘s edition.
For this reason, Tenniel chose an approach different from Carroll‘s to represent the scene, or more precisely speaking, to choose a different moment. Hancher seems to have been aware of the advantage of Tenniel‘s rendering from the narrative view point
22 Hancher (as note 18), p. 31.
23 Ibid. William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral, London: Chatto & Windus, 1935, p. 271; Donald Rackin, ―Laughing and Grief: What‘s so Funny About Alice in Wonderland?,‖ in: Edward Guiliano (ed.), Lewis Carroll Observed, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1976, p. 12.
24 Carroll (as note 11), p. 45.
25 Ibid.
9
and accordingly pointed out that ―by showing the actual room, Tenniel has occasion to show the window through which Alice thrusts her arm, in a first effort to escape her confinement.‖26 However, the author did not use this fact to doubt or correct his former evaluation. The most possible explanation might again be that the analysis of the illustration‘s narrative was not Hancher‘s primary interest. What he is concerned with, in this case, is how much and in what way Carroll‘s drawings for Alice’s Adventures under Ground influenced Tenniel‘s illustrations to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.27
Wallace Martin said: ―By changing the definition of what is being studied, we change what we see; and when different definitions are used to chart the same territory, the result will differ…, each revealing one aspect of reality by virtue of disregarding all others.‖28 The point of Martin‘s statement to which we should pay attention is the critical connection between the definition and its result. A false definition would more likely than not create a distorted vision of the subject studied and, hence, lead to a false understanding of it. The above-mentioned example of the comparison between Carroll‘s and Tenniel‘s representations of the Alice Stuck in the White Rabbit’s House scene should be considered in this way.
Two seminal works on narratology are Narrative Discourse (French original title:
Discours du récit) by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette, first published in 1972, and Story and Discourse by the American film and literary critic Seymour Chatman, which appeared in the same year.29 Both of them are based on the
26 Hancher (as note 18), p. 31.
27 In this case, Hancher concludes that ―Tenniel altered Carroll‘s drawing considerably, but he did not ignore it; ibid. In this case, Hancher concludes that ―Tenniel altered Carroll‘s drawing considerably, but he did not ignore it; ibid.
28 Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, Peking: Peking University Press, 2006, p. 15.
29 Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980 (The original is
―Discours du récit,‖ a portion of Figures III, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972); Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse, New York: Cornell University Press, 1972.
10
structuralist tradition.30 In the works cited here, the authors deal primarily with issues of form rather than content.31
The most valuable achievement of Genette‘s work is that he not only clarified the confusion embedded in some of the concepts previously proposed by other
narratologists, but that he also arranged the various related concepts in a systematic way.32 For instance, he removed the ambiguity of the term ―narrative‖ by making a distinction between the three levels of meaning contained in it, which could have referred to discourse (the narrative statement, the oral or written discourse) and story (the succession of events, real or fictitious, that are the subjects of this discourse;
narrating (the narrative act of the narrator).33 The first and third levels of narrative establish the part of narrative discourse. Another major example concerns the concept of ―point of view.‖ According to Genette, ―most of the theoretical works on this subject (which are mainly classifications) suffer from a regrettable confusion between what I call here mood and voice,‖34 that is, between ―the question who sees? and the question who speaks?‖35 To clarify the terminology poses a considerable challenge to a specialist due to the fact that one cannot properly describe anything without the aid of a vocabulary with precise definition. Most of the definitions to the concepts of narrative theory proposed by Genette have been recognized by most experts.36 Just as
30 Genette and Chatman are thought of as the most influential exponents of structural analysis. See Wallace Martin, (as note 28), p. 11.
31 Jonathan Culler rightly points out that ―the structuralist study of literature, associated with the names of Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Genette, and others, sought not to interpret literature but to investigate its structure and devices.‖ Jonathan Culler, Foreword to Gérard Genette‘s Narrative Discourse; Genette (as note 29), p. 8; Chatman states very clearly that he is ―concerned with form, rather than content, or with content when it is expressible as a form.‖ Chatman (as note 29), p. 10.
32 According to Culler, ―there has been no comprehensive survey‖ on the basic concepts of narrative theory until Genette, whose invaluable book Narrative Discours ―fills this need for a systematic theory of narrative.‖ Culler, in: Genette (as note 29), p. 7.
33 Genette (as note 29), pp. 25–27.
34 Genette (as note 29), p. 186.
35 Ibid.
36 Such as the term focalization has been used by Mieke Bal and James Phelan, just naming a few.
Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988;
James Phelan, ―Why Narrators Can Be Focalizers,‖ in: Willie van Peer and Seymour Chatman (eds.),
11
importantly, the various key concepts pertaining to narratology such as story time, narrative time, ellipses, prolepses, scene, summary, distance, and focalizations are integrated into a comprehensive and coherent framework, under the categories of order, duration, frequency, mood, and voice.
While the subject of Genette‘s work is limited to the purely verbal narrative,37 Chatman‘s study Story and Discourse includes also visual narrative by investigating paintings, comics, and cinematic examples.38 From the book title, we already sense the connection between his study and that of Genette. Chatman reveals this stating:
―Following such French structuralists as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerard Genette, I posit a what and a way. The what of narrative I call its ‗story‘; the way I call its ‗discourse.‘‖39 It can be summarized that the resourceful results of structuralist studies on narrative theory have been further developed into a new level by Chatman‘s Story and Discourse.40
My study on the narrative of Tenniel‘s illustrations to Alice’s Adventures benefits very much from the results of structuralist studies on narrative theory, and in
particular of Genette‘s and Chatman‘s works.
New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective, New York: State University, 2001, pp. 51–64.
37 To be more precisely, the book is at the same time a study on the narrative of Marcel Proust‘s A la recherché du temps perdu, which has been translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past as early as in 1934, published by Random House in New York.
38 Chatman is among those theorists ―who think that narrative and drama/movies are fundamentally similar, differing only in their methods of representation.‖ See Wallace Martin, (as note 28), p. 110.
39 Chatman (as note 29), p. 9.
40 Wallace Martin suggests that Chatman‘s Story and Discourse draws together ―the results of structuralist studies during the fifteen years preceding its publication in 1978.‖ See Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, Peking: Peking University Press, 2006, p.10; Chatman writes in the book that his purpose ―is not to polemicize, but to synthesize the most powerful insights—Anglo-American, Russian, and French‖. Chatman (as note 29), p. 11.
12