With this weeks activity of building a gallery to showcase the various editions of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, I learned a lot more about pictures themselves and their contexts, and further how their contexts influence the way that they represent a given text. For example, my group was asked to curate the illustrations of Laurence Housman, and through research I was able to discover that he made the original illustrations for the first published edition, meaning that they were less of a personal interpretation and more of a reflection of the text. Despite this, I was also able to see the various themes that Housman invites readers to interpret into his images, and further how these images came to be when considering Housman's artistic background. One of the most noteable ideas I found through my research and my curation was that the images by Housman are inherently sexual and paint the charcters in Rossetti's poem as such, and that these same illustrations were the ones that have been reprinted and republished for children's book versions of this same text. Itintroduced me to the idea of the dual-readership for the poem, which was one of the primary readings for this class, and put into perspective the influence that images themselves hold.

Looking at a work's changes over time definitely influenced my view of the poem. I didn't know that so many themes could be read into both the text and the images to allow newer versions of this poem to continue to be published into the modern day, as the group that curated the off-Broadway pieces showcased. Similarly, I had read this poem before for many different classes, but I did not notice the same themes and symbols as I did having read it this time around. I think a large part of why I had originally missed so many details prior to this weeks exercise is because before reading the poem for this class, I never paid attention to the illustrations, instead just assuming that they were a direct reflection of the text. Now knowing that this is not the case, I feel like I have learned much more about the poem as if I am reading it for the first time, because of the numerous elements that the interpretive images add to the text as a whole.