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"The dove, the rainbow, and the unicorn": 170 years of the flood story retold for children inwords and pictures

England, E.E.E.

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Citation for published version (APA):England, E. E. E. (2013). "The dove, the rainbow, and the unicorn": 170 years of the flood story retold forchildren in words and pictures.

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Download date: 20 Jun 2020

17

Part One, Chapter Two: Methodology

A wonderful coloured arc glowed in the sky.

Noah and his family went singing on their way under the rainbow.

Jenny Robertson, The Ladybird Bible Story Book, 1983

Developing a new methodology to analyze a type of biblical retelling necessitates that the

researcher tries to balance (1) answering her key research question/s, (2) demonstrating the

value of her approach, and (3) producing something that can be replicated by others. In this

Chapter I suggest one possible framework for analyzing children’s Bible retellings. I begin by

explaining why I choose to use the term “retelling” rather than children’s Bibles. I then

explain my research process, specifically outlining how I selected, recorded, and

quantitatively analyzed the retellings. In the final section I introduce my approach to close

reading retellings from a narratological perspective, including where I locate myself as the

reader. This includes a summarizing case study demonstrating the implications of the

word/image relationship.

Why “Retelling”?

The majority of work undertaken on Bibles for children uses the phrase “children’s Bibles”

(Schaafsma 1997, 14; Person and Person 2005, 13). It is not always clear what a children’s

Bible is. Researchers need to consider whether or not the book needs to be self-defined as a

Bible,1 how many stories it takes to label a book a Bible, and the degree to which the stories

remain “faithful” to the biblical texts (whether in translation or not). Some have described

any book with at least one biblical story as a “children’s Bible” (Smit 1979, 10; Koek and

Posthumus 1985, 9). Others do not consider these to be children’s Bibles (Burggraaf 1969, 1).

1 This would be indicated in the paratextual material including title, cover page, or table of contents.

18

When I use the term “children’s Bibles,” which is infrequently, I do so to refer to them as a

collective group beyond the scope of the books I discuss. The focus of this study is on

individual stories. A term was needed to reflect this distinction. The term chosen was

“retelling.” The word “retelling” is in wide use in reception history, but it has also been

applied to Bible stories published for children.

In Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarrative in

Children’s Literature, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum use “retelling” to describe twice-

told tales (cf. Beckett 2002, xx).2 They classify biblical narratives for children, using 3

categories: (1) traditional religious retellings and reversions (reversions alter the original

genre, message, function or patterns of the source texts), (2) literary retellings and reversions,

and (3) secular retellings and reversions.

“Traditional religious retellings of Bible story (sic) almost always seek to instruct child

readers and are situated within and instrumental in sustaining conventional Judaeo-Christian

interpretive metanarratives” (Stephens and McCallum 1998, 33). Contemporary reversions in

this category of retellings highlight the religious moral of the story. They usually follow the

basic structure of the story and have limited, repetitive vocabulary with simple syntax. The

language will either be based on modern translations of the Bible with third-person narration

or idiomatic and with more character focalization.

Literary retellings also maintain the basic structure of the biblical text. They are,

however, more varied in their discourse styles, genres, tone, and technique. They may also

2 Biblical scholars discussing literature use a variety of terms, all of which would be possible but are

too technical for my broader purposes. Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg suggests the most complex

vocabulary specifically created for literary afterlives of the Bible. It is based on theories of

intertextuality, midrash, and translation. Her terms, at least partly based on Genette’s Palimpsests

(1997), include: “translocation” (changing the place) and “transmutation” (changing the medium, i.e.,

by adding pictures; 2008, 211–213). Mikael Sjöberg has a less detailed approach although it still

classifies the types of retellings, again influenced by Genette (Sjöberg 2006, 208–213). Again using

Genette, Anthony Swindell uses “hypertexts” (2010, 2). Terry R. Wright discusses novels based upon

biblical narratives as “midrash,” but only those whose authors have demonstrable awareness of

Rabbinic literature (2007, 10–26).

19

suppress or exclude explicit religious lessons. The authors add framing narratives to this type.

Further removed from the biblical text are secular retellings. “Secular humanist retellings and

reversion frequently resituate the story in another, usually modern, context or ‘retell’ the

story either as a kind of sequel to the pre-text or as another version of the pre-text” (Stephens

and McCallum 1998, 33). They can be playful and intertextual and still cite the pre-text (the

source, the text being retold) in quotation as well as use multiple discourse techniques.

These descriptions provide an interesting summary of how retellings may work, but

the classification is problematic in its rigidness. By the authors’ own admission, the line

between reversion and retelling becomes blurred (33). For this reason I do not use the term

“reversion” in this study. This leaves us with 3 possible types of retellings: traditional,

literary, and secular. As descriptions of retellings the terms function well on a general level.

If, for example, we consider retellings of the Genesis flood story that only include Noah, the

ark, and animals but little else, we can see their ideas in action. These texts “are constructed

intertextually from a range of generically linked story motifs and discursive elements

…[they] are secular humanistic reversions” (Stephens and McCallum 1998, 56). Sally

Kilroy’s lift-the-flap book Noah and the Rabbits (1990, DBID 205) is a good example. Noah

has to find space for the rabbits on the ark and in his search the reader has to lift up the flaps

to find where the animals are hiding. Other examples are even further removed from Genesis,

for example Norah’s Ark, written by Ann Cartwright and illustrated by Reg Cartwright,

presents the only female “Noah” (1983, DBID 300).3 In it Norah, the female “Noah,” saves

her farm animals from flooding by turning the old barn upside down and making it into a

boat. These types of retellings, along with other more traditional examples, construct a

position from which to interpret the ideologies of religious metanarratives.

3 Other examples may exist, but I have not encountered them.

20

Stephens and McCallums’s work on retellings is a good springboard from which to

explore children’s Bible retellings, but like many taxonomies it is somewhat arbitrary.4 As I

discovered in my research, it is not easy trying to differentiate between what is a secular and

religious retelling. Unless a retelling is self-defined as religious (in this study, specifically

Christian), it is very hard to define it as such. Much harder is to label something secular.5 Add

to this the constructs of traditional and literary, and we are left with a taxonomy with a fuzzy

set of potentially overlapping boundaries. Although they offer a useful introduction to the

variety of retellings published, I reject the taxonomy while adopting the term “retelling.”

So, how do I define and classify the retellings? In the first instance, in order for a

retelling to be regarded as such, rather than as an allusion or intertext (although they are not

mutually exclusive), there need to be 3 recognizable motifs. These are usually a variation on

the name “Noah,” animals, and a boat; usually there is also rain. These retellings are labeled

“decontextualized.”6 Most of the retellings in this study are not decontextualized; they

attempt to retell the flood story with more details, including the flood, rainbow, and dove.

Moving away from decontextualized retellings and along the scale of supposed “fidelity” to

Genesis, we eventually come to translations.

Many of the studied retellings are either republished and reformatted pre-existing

translations (Rainbow Good News Bible 1994, DBID 304) or edited versions of preexisting

4 Melody Briggs in “The Word Became Visual Text: The Boy Jesus in Children’s Bibles” (2012, 153–

172) supplies another taxonomy for discussing children’s Bible retellings as a collective unit. She

suggests 4 categories, which are not mutually exclusive: (1) value-driven, foregrounding a particular

social value; (2) dogma-driven, constructing theological boundaries; (3) education-driven,

supplemental information not necessary for the story; and (4) engagement-driven, encouragement and

stimulus is provided. I agree with Briggs that these elements are absolutely part of children’s Bible

retellings, but they are rarely clearly delineated. 5 In my database the only way in which I have been able to justify calling something secular is when

there are no religious indicators. By religious indicators I mean: God, the terms “Bible” and/or “Old

Testament,” Christian Author, Christian Introduction/Foreword, Christian Epilogue/Afterword, and

Other Christian Paratext (such as titles of other Bible stories in the same series, references to Jesus).

Even when a retelling has one or more of these items, it does not automatically mean that we can

describe it as religious. For ease, my term is “overtly religious,” but even this is a limited idea. 6 John Stephens and Robyn McCallum (1998, 56) call these “bricolage” texts.

21

translations dominated by images (Anon, “Text from the Revised Standard Version of the

Bible” 1988, DBID 44). The cover, title page, introduction, accompanying images, and

editing of the text make these retellings. In addition, there is a strong case to be made for the

fact that translations themselves are retellings.7 This is because they cannot present all of the

meanings of the original language, at least in part because of the transcultural gap. The

inability to translate all of the meanings of a word could almost lead to translations being

considered abridgements. Translations are not only governed by language differences but also

by theological and social norms. For the purposes of this study, I regard translations as

retellings. I use the word “retelling” to refer to a reworking of the flood story for children

published in England between 1837 and 2006. It can be as “faithful” as a translation, or be so

“decontextualized” that it only has 3 core recognizable motifs, or anything in between. How

then, did I research the retellings for this study? I explain this in the next section.

Data Collection

In order to ensure the greatest level of integrity in the research results, a large body of work

needed to be analyzed. As a nonbibliographic study, it would have been impossible to attempt

to provide a fully comprehensive catalog of children’s Bibles and flood-story retellings.8

Nevertheless, an element of bibliographic research was necessary in order to locate the

material. This was in part because the cataloging and collection of published books for

children is sporadic. Many of the most important collections were developed in private hands

7 Translation studies is its own discipline, whether the Bible (cf. Buber and Rosenzweig 1994;

Brenner and van Henten 2002; Hess and Porter 2004) or children’s literature (Oittinen 2000; Lathey

2006; Lathey 2010). Little work has been done on the translation of the Bible for children, but J. S. du

Toit has been working on a project called “Bible Interpretation in Children’s Literature” at the

University of the Free State in South Africa. The results of this research are gradually being published

(du Toit 2008, 33–44). J. S. du Toit and Luna Beard “are of the opinion that as children’s bibles are

based on a Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek source text, the epithet ‘translator’ is more appropriate [than

‘author’ or ‘reteller’]” (2005, fn1 [n.p.]). This overemphasizes the connection between the biblical

source text and the retelling. Rather retellings retell translations (and other retellings; pp. 329-330). 8 Cf. van der Meiden (2009).

22

before being bequeathed to libraries and museums. Such collections are distributed globally

and there are no comprehensive collections of English-language children’s books anywhere

in the world. Children’s literature studies rarely discuss Bibles, while the best-known catalogs

of English printed Bibles (Darlow & Moule 1903; Herbert 1968) rarely record children’s

books.9 This makes the systematic finding, recording, and cataloging of children’s Bibles a

daunting task.

I focused on one collection: the British Library in London. It is one of the primary

collections used in historical children’s literature research; it is accessible, has an online

catalog, and it is more likely to be known by nonchildren’s literature specialists than some

other collections.10

Significantly, the British Library also has a larger number of children’s

Bibles and Bible retellings than libraries based upon most privately developed collections.

Inevitably, choosing one library as the focus has its limitations, not just based upon changes

in classifications, but also in material stored and collected. Dust jackets, for example, have

not been kept and stored in the same system. The librarian, publication date, acquisition date,

the type of publication, and other factors all impact upon whether and how the dust jackets of

books were stored.11

Perhaps more significantly, certain types of books are not currently

stored even though older variations of the same books are kept. One example particularly

relevant for flood retellings is activity books, including coloring books and sticker books.

These are not held at the British Library irrespective of the content of the book. My Bible

Activity Book (Randall and Jewitt 2006, DBID 309), which includes stickers, pictures to

9 As an example I have two books on the database, published in 1873. Reverend Rogers’s The School

And Children's Bible (1873, DBID 54) is in the Herbert book (entry 1997), but Ingram Cobbin’s The

Youths' Bible And Commentator ([c.1873], DBID 27) is not present. Despite this, two of Cobbin’s

other works are (both for family/domestic use). In the catalogs there are no clear guidelines on how

children’s Bibles should be recorded and when. Furthermore, the Nineteenth Century Short Title

Catalogue 1816–1870 “Bible” volume (1986) only includes short titles. Thus it does not always

indicate when a book is for children. 10

The two other primary collections in England are the Renier Collection at the Victoria and Albert

Museum (London), and the Opie Collection at the Bodleian Library (Oxford). 11

Many thanks to Tanya Kirk from the Rare Books Reference Service for providing me with this

information.

23

color, and puzzles, is not therefore officially covered under the “Review of Acquisitions and

Retentions Policies” (RARP). This is despite the fact that the stories are more detailed and

more complex than many children’s books without such activities.12

In addition to collection

guidelines, some books are not held by the library. This may be because publishers failed to

send the book into the library or the book may have been lost.13

Initial searches undertaken in the catalog were for the terms “child? + Bible, any

field” and “Noah’s Ark, any field.” Secondary searches, based upon subject headings and

tertiary searches based upon rarer terms in all fields were also undertaken. These original

searches yielded over 1500 results. These search results were not representative of the

material sought. The results often overlapped, books were not always accurately recorded, the

information recorded changed over the 170 years, and invariably the subject classification

was (partially) wrong. The books themselves also caused difficulties, with book titles

misrepresenting what the book is about, sometimes merely by virtue of historical changes.

Victorian titles, for example, are not always clear to today’s reader: “daily texts” refer to

small portions of scripture, often in a blank journal.

The results were manually filtered to remove likely inappropriate publications based

on the title, place of publication, and additional information. Approximately 1000 books

remained on the list. These I divided according to decade of publication so that I could view

12

The specific wording of the relevant passage in the RARP is: “the following are interpreted as out

of scope: colouring-in books, dot-to-dot books, cut-out books, fill-in puzzle books, sticky labels

books, except where these elements are a small proportion of the overall book” (RARP 3.3.1). Like all

classification systems, this is clearly open to the interpretation of the librarian and does not reflect the

historical items kept at the library, many of which would not be kept had they been published today. (I

would like to offer thanks to Duncan Heyes, curator of the Modern British Collections, who sent me

the relevant sections of the RARP. I later discovered that he also asked for My Activity Book [Randall

and Jewitt 2006, DBID 309] to be kept in the collection because of our ongoing discussions about the

policy and collection. It would have otherwise been discarded even though it was received under the

normal deposit procedures.) 13

Examples of books I own, but the British Library does not, include a collection of Hebrew Bible

stories (Maxwell [c.1949], a decontextualized retelling (Orr 1996), and a movable picturebook (Anon

2000).

24

the books based upon dispersal throughout the decades, randomly selecting titles from each

decade. I viewed over half of the books, of which around 200 did not include Bible story

retellings or were of New Testament stories. The 311, including Hebrew Bible retellings,

were added to my custom-designed-and-built database, of which 263 include flood retellings.

These latter examples are what I refer to throughout this thesis as the corpus. A detailed

analysis of these retellings and further bibliographic information was recorded on the

database.

Quantitative Content Analysis14

The data collection itself was undertaken with a number of points in mind:

1) The data had to be recorded in the database accurately and while minimizing

subjectivity.

2) Any thoughts that related to the thesis had to be written elsewhere (Microsoft

OneNote was used for this task).

3) Any apparently interesting, unusual, or typical examples had to be noted without

adding extra material to the database entry. This was important to do at this stage so

that copies of significant books could be purchased. Where this was not possible (due

to rarity, unavailability, or cost) as many pages as possible (within copyright) had to

be copied at the library. Photocopies were supported by detailed notes and the copy-

typing of the narrative. On numerous occasions, what seemed typical or unusual was

proved to be the opposite when the statistics were drawn from the database. This

demonstrated the value of quantifiable research. Some of these occurrences are

referred to in the study.

14

Many thanks need to be given to Prof. dr. August den Hollander (Vrij Universiteit, Amsterdam)

who reviewed the first version of the database. Thanks are also due to Prof. dr. Lisa Kuitert

(University of Amsterdam) and Jill Shefrin (independent children’s book historian) who gave advice

on what information is most useful to book historians and how to present it.

25

The database fields are clearly defined in order to keep the information collected as objective

as possible, as well as to maintain the integrity, searchability, and usability of the data. There

are two types of data held in the database: Bibliographic Data and Flood Story Data. In

addition, each entry has a unique identification code.15

Every time a retelling is referenced in

the thesis, this code, identifiable as DBID #, accompanies it to ensure maximum possible

integration between the thesis and data recording. The bibliographic and cataloging

instructions and the database specifications are included on the accompanying DVD.

I created the classification system used for the flood-story analysis, using general

principles of content analysis: “Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable

and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use”

(Krippendorff 2004, 18; cf. Neuendorf 2002, 10). The primary benefit of this kind of work is

the minimizing (but inevitably not the exclusion) of impressionistic interpretations. It also

reduces the opportunity to discuss many interesting exceptions in detail because the

researcher has to be strict about presenting the results and their implications. Two key texts

were used as inspiration: Klaus Krippendorff’s Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its

Methodology (2nd edition, 2004) and Kimberley A. Neuendorf’s The Content Analysis

Guidebook (2002). My work is not formal content analysis; for this, one needs to be fully

trained and the material needs to be worked on by multiple people (i.e., the creator of the

coding system should ideally not be the one undertaking the coding). Nevertheless, content

analysis ideas are often used outside content analysis. Indeed, Bible concordances were

central to the development of content analysis (Neuendorf 2002, 31).

The process of content analysis requires unitizing some form of countable

communication such as advertising, television, or speech (latent content, such as sexism, is

15

The numbers on the database go up to 320. This is because there are no records for the following

numbers due to processes undertaken during the research phase: 1, 5, 71, 81, 128, 130, 131, 157, and

303. The numbers are in the order the records were added; something which depended upon sampling

and availability of the materials at the library.

26

not countable; Neuendorf 2002, 14, 23; Krippendorff 2004, 83). These units must be

carefully defined to enable clear coding and inferences must not be made. An example from

my coding would be: “Noah and the Altar (8:20). Specific reference must be made to Noah

and the altar, irrespective of what is on it.” Any instance where Noah only gives thanks or

worships God must be ignored. Only those instances where an object clearly identifiable as

an altar—such as a pile of stones, a fire, or other item—is pictured or described must be

recorded. This can lead to significant complications and seeming oddities, but by working

with the text like this, we can understand it in more precise detail.

It is never possible to report all details of a message set, neither through coding nor

statistical analysis. Decisions have to be made based upon what the researcher is exploring

and on practicalities. For example, because I was analyzing a large sample, I focused on

content rather than narratological elements, such as whether or not God spoke directly or

indirectly. Even here, however, a decision has to be made. Should one reject indirect speech?

I included this by coding God speaking: “God told Noah exactly how the boat was to be

made” (Robertson 1983, 16, DBID 311). Conversely, I did not record narratized discourse or

diegetic summary as God’s speech: “God caused Noah to make a great ship, an ark” (Turner

1968, 11, DBID 307).

With regard to the images I could not code for close-ups, color, and background. An

analysis of this material would be possible if the sample size were smaller or, for example, if

only one motif were analyzed (such as the drowning of humanity). Illustrations in the

retellings needed as much clarity in the recording as the words. Sometimes, for example, it

seems obvious that the animals are entering the ark because they are lined up in pairs, facing

the same direction in a “queue.” Without the animals at the front of the line clearly entering

the ark, this could not be classified as “Animals enter the ark (7:8–9, 14–16).” The

classification system is therefore a record of very specific, explicit events and speeches.

27

In developing the coding system, I created 4 versions of the database before it reached

its final form. In doing so, I established the variables before the research began rather than

basing it upon my own expectations, although the exploratory work did ensure that the

coding system was appropriate for the material (Neuendorf, 2002, 11–12). On the database

there are 88 unique codes. Each code may be used twice for each retelling, once for the words

and once for the images (although none are, probably because of the complexities involved in

such an endeavor). Despite this exploratory work, the coding could never be perfect, and I

regret not having included angels, the Drunken Noah story (Gen 9:20–29), and God’s “Seed-

Time and Harvest” speech (Gen 8:22). The first two I recorded as “Fictional animals or

beings” or “Other biblical references/narratives.” The latter did not get specifically recorded.

Rather, I recorded the context it was spoken in, either “God decides not to destroy the

earth/every living being/humanity again (8:21),” “God blesses Noah and his sons (9:1),” or

“Promise not to send flood (9:11).”

Having decided upon the coding, a sample size needed to be chosen to maximize

reliability and meet the needs of the research questions. Given that there were 1000 books on

my list, I aimed to have at least 300 books (i.e, a third of the available material) on the

database, and at least 250 retellings in the corpus. In choosing the sample, I used stratified

sampling, whereby I recognized subgroups based specifically upon the decade of publication

and used a random sample from each group (Krippendorff 2004, 115–116, cf. Neuendorf

2002, 85–86). My process is reliable and repeatable, key factors of content analysis

(Neuendorf 2002, 12; Krippendorff 2004, 18).

After coding the data, this then needed to be reduced to manageable representations. I

made numerous statistical representations and key examples are presented throughout this

study (cf. Appendix A, p. 351). From these statistics I drew out those that seemed most

interesting, noticeable, common, or relevant. I looked at these examples more closely, using a

28

close reading strategy to see how, and in some cases why, such patterns exist (Krippendorff

2004, 83). My research is ultimately a qualitative analysis based on a quantitative study; the

quantitative material helps me to ask questions such as, “Why does this happen so often?”16

The approach I use to read the individual retellings is presented in the remainder of this

Chapter.

Who Is the Reader of the Book?

To read the Genesis narrative and its retellings, including the words and images I use

narratology, the study of narrative, and associated tools from children’s literature studies.

Before I present this approach, I briefly discuss how I use the construct “reader,” specifically

the reader of children’s books.

When does a person learn not to read the title and publication details on the title page

of a book? This seemingly obvious question posed by Margaret Meek (1988, 9) demonstrates

the complexities associated with reading. The answers will vary. Children (and adults) learn

not to read all or parts of the title page at different times. This one page and how children

interact with it will impact upon their reading experiences. When this idea is expanded to

include all words, images, intertexts, listening, observing, playing with, rereading and

recreating books, the complexity of reading becomes all the more apparent. Furthermore, the

process of understanding will be affected by different social and cultural milieus. In The

Nimble Reader Roderick McGillis describes his students’ responses to different books (1996,

177–200). When reading C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) one

student associated it with child abuse and found the book and its author troubling. She herself

was a survivor of childhood incestual abuse. Reading the same book, a different student who

16

An example of a primarily quantitative study of a large corpus is Hanna Andersdotter Sveen’s

“Honourable” or “Highly-sexed”: Adjectival Descriptions of Male and Female Characters in

Victorian and Contemporary Children's Fiction (2005).

29

had had deep sentimental attachment to it, became angry with the book and the teacher for

making her see the androcentric Christianity within the story. The responses of both students

were governed by their prior and ongoing life experiences. Specific readings have also been

borne out by research in young children who frequently use “personal analogy to try to

understand the feelings of characters or animals in the books” (Arizpe and Styles 2003, 225).

In today’s academic environment it may seem obvious to highlight the individual experiences

of readers, but it bears repeating, especially when we are talking about children.

In this study I will not be exploring how children encounter books. This kind of

reading requires specific sociological skill sets (cf. Benton 1993, 8–30; Kiefer 1995, 1–65;

Arizpe and Styles 2003, 1–15; Toomey 2009, 2–4).17

When the “child reader” is mentioned,

it is from the context of highlighting disparity between possible reading outcomes. This is

based on the assertion that, for this study at least, it is not possible to claim that there is a

typical reader. The producers of a specific retelling may have their own ideal reader, but the

different producers of a retelling may not agree with each other about what that is.

Additionally, publisher’s catalogs, advertisements, librarians, and reviewers may all suggest

different possible audiences, which may be based upon child or reading age. Furthermore, I

am studying retellings across 170 years and to study the readers of those books would be an

entirely different project.18

Rather than read the retellings from the perspective of the child reader, I undertake a

text-orientated study. The first rigorous book-length, text-orientated study of children’s

literature from a reader-response perspective was John Stephens’s Language and Ideology in

Children’s Fiction (1992). He used new developments in theory and noted that critical

17

See also Part One of the Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature (Wolf et

al. 2011, 1–176). 18

Matthew Grenby has undertaken a study of child readers between 1700–1840. By working through

various collections, he ascertained that access to children’s books did not seem to match the professed

religious viewpoints of the authors or the families holding the collections (2011, 88–91).

30

practice is best characterized as “a dialective between textual discourse (including its

construction of an implied reader and a range of potential subject positions) and a reader’s

disposition, familiarity with story conventions and experiential knowledge” (1992, 59). I

recognize the validity of reader-response criticism, but also the significance of the text as a

signifier. This results in my personal reading position as the poetic interpreter:

‘poetic interpreter’ is the collective term for the interaction between (a)

a textual persona [i.e., the implied reader], (b) my own individual

persona, and (c) my communal persona [i.e., the critical community to

which I belong]) (sic) which always manifests itself in interpretation.

(Young 1999, 44–45)

Stating who I am as a reader is impossible because there are so many factors. I can, however,

state that I am female, childfree, Caucasian, and secular. My formal education has been in

biblical studies, and I have had a lifelong interest in both children’s literature and the

fantastic. I am part of the broad academy of biblical scholars, with strong connections to the

fantastic studies community (both professionally and as a fan). Since I was a teenager I have

worked with children in schools and youth groups (both professionally and as a volunteer).

All of this, and more, forms who I am as a poetic interpreter. My position guides me to

uncover potential ideological readings based on the text and image as signifiers using my

own personal situation, experiences, and knowledge. I do so building upon ideas largely

grounded in narratological and children’s literature studies, as I now demonstrate.

31

Reading Narratives

Narrative is “a representation of a series of events meaningfully connected in a temporal and

causal way” (Onega and Landa 1996, 3; cf. Genette 1980, 25-27; Rimmon-Kenan 2002, 1–4;

Prince 2003, 58–61). As a representation it “involves a point of view, a selection, a

perspective on the represented object, criteria of relevance, and, arguably, an implicit theory

of reality” (Onega and Landa 1996, 3). “Narrative” can be used interchangeably with “story,”

but the two terms do have different meanings.19

“Story” focuses attention on what actually

happens: God announces the flood. “Narrative” suggests not only what happens but how:

God announces the flood in direct speech.

As I explain above, I generally use the term “reader” in this study, rather than terms

such as “audience,” “receiver,” “beholder,” or “implied reader.” Sometimes, however, I use

the term “narratee.” When I use it, I do so to mean the reader, listener, person, and/or group

the narrator is addressing. This may be because the reader is explicitly addressed in the

narrative (i.e., “You will find in this story,” Jewson 1950, 27 DBID 172), or the narratee may

be a character in the narrative (i.e., “Mavis and Hugh,” Gascoigne 1946, 28 DBID 149).

As much as the narratee takes a back-seat in this study, so does the author. I have

chosen not to focus on authors as “it is both impossible and useless to generalize about them”

(Bal 1985, 7; cf. Barthes 1967). Specifically, I do not consider it possible to reconstruct

theoretical authorial (or illustrator) intent. Authors and their material are not always in

agreement. The prolific author Enid Blyton is represented in the corpus by secular,

decontextualized retellings (1995, DBID 74), and overtly Christian Bibles (1985, DBID 56).

In some instances, as with both these retellings, the edition I use was published decades after

the author wrote the book (1948 and [c. 1949] respectively). The reasons for reprinting the

retelling may be very different from why it was originally written. When retellings are

19

For an overview of the complex relationship and problems of defining story and narrative, see

Genette 1980, 25–29, 156n; Rimmon-Kenan 2002, 3.

32

reprinted, they may be repackaged for more modern audiences, or grouped with different

stories entirely, perhaps also targeting a specific gender or age not originally intended.

Just as I do not talk of “authorial intent,” I do not refer to the “implied author” as

constructed from the text, and separate from the actual author.20

When the author is referred

to, it is in reference to the actual but unknowable author. Far more common and relevant is

my use of “producers.” This (nonnarratological) term emphasizes the relevance of the

authors, illustrators, editors, designers, consultants, translators, and all others associated with

the publication of the retelling and its book. This is particularly pertinent to retellings of

Genesis, as the authorship of the source text is already theoretical and abstract (i.e., Yahwist

/Priestly writer /Redactor, pp. 46-48).

Within this study the narrator is dominant, although I am aware she, he or it can only

exist with the author and narratee.21

The narrator is the voice that is always present as the

agent that imparts the narrative. A clear difficulty with this is how to understand discourse:

speech-acts that are not explicitly expressed by the narrator. They exist within the narrative

and are therefore constrained by another agent selecting when, where, and what they speak.

This narratorial mediation can be seen through tags (i.e., “she said”) and/or quotation marks

(i.e., “—”). How do we refer to this agent? Mieke Bal uses the term “narrator” to refer to the

whole text, the narratorial speech acts, and the direct discourse. As Bergen asserts, this

confuses the situation unnecessarily, although I would agree with Bal’s abstract logic (1999,

35). I also agree with Bergen and Bal’s dismissal of “implied author” as the source of the

speech-acts (Bal 1985, 120; Bergen 1999, 35). Bergen’s solution is to have the direct speech

ascribed to the character who speaks. This seems to be a simple option but one that gives the

20

A useful distinction is: “the implied author means, the implied reader interprets; the narrator speaks,

the narratee listens” (Nelles 1997, 5). The implied author is useful in narratological studies of the

Bible when there is incongruity between the values and opinions of the narrator and/or characters

(Christianson 1998, 162). 21

For an introduction to the differences between author and reader-oriented studies in biblical studies,

see Bergen 1999, 17–27.

33

character an independent role it cannot have. My solution is to accept the narrator (not the

author) as the agent who makes the selection and formulates the discourse. For the sake of

simplification, I nonetheless assume that the character is the speaker. In instances where

specific clarification is necessary, I differentiate between narrators by referring to the narrator

of the whole narrative as the “general narrator.” How, then, does this manifest in the

retellings? None of the retellings have the same narrative as the Genesis version: something

in the text is always different, even if it is only the paratextual material.

Paratextual material includes the cover, title page, copyright page, footnotes, and

headings: anything that is extraneous to the primary content of the book.22

“These provide the

text with a (variable) setting and sometimes a commentary, official or not, which even the

purists among readers, those least inclined to external erudition, cannot always disregard as

easily as they would like and as they claim to do” (Genette 1997, 3). Paratextual material can

set the tone, theme, and atmosphere of a retelling. It is an ideological driving force. It

highlights the significance of the “producer” as opposed to the “author.” Book covers, for

example, are part of a wider marketing strategy to maximize sales. They are not product led

but are driven by the need to sell the book (Phillips 2007, 19–30). Yet, they can still be

interpreted as part of the story (Nikolajeva 2010, 183). Likewise, endpapers, the leaves at the

very beginning and end of a book (in hardback books these are usually the pages stuck to the

inside front and back cover), can be very significant. They set the mood, especially of

picturebooks (Kiefer 1995, 122; Sipe and McGuire 2006, 291–304). They can set the feel and

location of the story, warn of what is to come, highlight specific themes of the book, and help

interpret the story (Kiefer 1995, 132; Lewis 2001, 168). The color, content, scene, or pattern

presented impact upon the book. As features predominantly associated with hardback books,

22

A quantitative and systematic analysis of paratextual material is not possible in this thesis because

of how the books have been maintained at the British Library: the irregular storage of dust jackets,

repairs, and small books being bound together without reference as to why, when, or by whom.

Paratextual material is referred to when it is of particular relevance.

34

the impact of endpapers can be seen when paperback print runs leave the endpapers out rather

than reprint them.

So far the author, narrator, reader, and paratextual material have been considered, but

what of the events and actors? Despite the retellings and Genesis being different narratives,

they broadly tell the same story with the same key events. An event is a change of state

brought about by an agent with an act or action (a connected series of acts), or as something

that just “happens” (such as the sun setting; cf. Bal 1985, 13–18; Prince 2003, 1, 3, 28, 39).23

Events are experienced and/or enacted by actors. They can be individuals (Noah’s wife) or

groups (the daughters of men), supernatural (God), human (Noah), animal (the dove), object

(the ark), or unambiguously fictitious (unicorns). The actors are described, using one of 3

terms, although which term applies to each actor varies depending upon the text and

narration: character, functioning actor, nonfunctioning actor.

Characters are actors who play a role in events and have “distinctive human

characteristics” (Bal 1985, 79; cf. Gass 2005, 116–119). They become individual characters

through their repeated presence and patterns of behavior, in their difference from other

participants, and in the reader’s response to them. Characters have a distinct voice, not only

from other participants but also the narrator, including first-person narratives (Genette 1980,

182–185). We see this with God, whose extensive direct speeches enable the reader to

experience him more fully than any other actor in the narrative (p. 69). Naming conventions

also create characters (Fludernik 2009, 44–46). The name Noah is a good example of this. In

Hebrew it may mean rest or comfort, and there are numerous types of wordplay in Genesis

using it (pp. 66-67). Characterization is done narratorially/figurally, explicitly/implicitly, and

by the self/another (Jahn 2005, N7). Characters are not always substantial, coherent or

23

These events, when “abstracted from their disposition in the text and reconstructed in their

chronological order” form the fabula (de Jong 2007, xi; cf. Bal 1985, 11–47). In most retellings the

events of the story are told in chronological order.

35

developed. In the next Chapter I explain why God is the only character in the Genesis flood

narrative (pp. 95-97).

The next group of actors relevant for this study is “functioning actors.” These are

participants who play a causal or experiential role in events. This is through change, choice,

and/or confrontation (Bal 1985, 14–18). The daughters of men, sons of God, destroyed

humans, Noah, and (eventually) Noah’s sons can be defined as such. Still further away from

characters are “nonfunctioning actors”: participants who have no functional role. Mieke Bal

uses the example of people who open doors in nineteenth-century novels. They have no

specific role to play in the event, although they act (by opening doors). They are nevertheless

still significant in what they depict, such as social stratification (Bal 1985, 25). In the Genesis

flood story, Noah’s wife, and daughters-in-law are nonfunctioning actors.

Heavily associated with how events and actors are perceived, portrayed, and created,

is focalization (Genette 1980, 185-211; Bal 1985, 100–114; Rimmon-Kenan 2002, 72–86).

This is the perspective through which narrated events are experienced. Within narratology the

discussion centers around the portrayal of actors and events by the narrator and actors, and is

dependent on many factors, including narrative levels (stories within stories, p. 211;

Nieragden 2002). As always with critical readings, the interpretation is made by a person not

within the narrative, the reader. Therefore, to clarify this nuance, throughout this study,

unless I explicitly state otherwise, focalization and its variants will be used to refer to who I,

as the external reader and poetic interpreter, perceive is portrayed as the central (focalizing)

figure in any given verbal or visual event or occurrence. Focalization is critical in how both

the Genesis flood story and retellings of it construct actors and events, and ultimately in how

the story is adapted, portrayed, and interpreted.

36

Reading Words and Images

Illustrated books have been the dominant form of retellings, especially from the last 40 years.

Illustrated books focus upon the verbal text as the dominant narrative. Without the words the

narrative would not be understood. The illustrations are nonessential but still affect the

interpretation of the story. Retellings increasingly take the form of picturebooks, as with my

case study. Picturebooks rely on “the interdependence of pictures and words, on the

simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of turning the page” (Bader

1976, 1; cf. Doonan 1993, 11–47; Stephens and Watson 1994; Sipe 2011, 238–252).24

Picturebooks are more reliant on the relationship between illustrations and words. Without

the illustrations or the words, the story may not be different but the narrative will be

different. Key to all illustrated works, especially for picturebooks, is the impact of the

word/image relationship. Images and words not only fill each other’s gaps, but also contradict

each other, leading to a complicated and potentially unclear story.

In the last few pages of this Chapter some of the close-reading techniques used with

the retellings are introduced. One retelling is used to demonstrate the complexities of the

word/image relationship: The Flood written by Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier, and

illustrated by Sylvie Montmoulineix (1997, DBID 260). My summary of the narrative as told

in words is presented first, then in images, before considering how the words and images

function together. For each summary, the page numbers are presented with numbers and

letters in parenthesis (3r, 3v). No page numbers are included in the book itself.25

The pages

are counted from the first leaf and not the endpapers, irrespective of content. The letters “v”

24

Nikolajeva and Scott seem to claim that illustrated Bible stories, as with the stories of Hans

Christian Andersen, are not picturebooks because the story would remain essentially the same without

the images (2006, 8; cf. Nikolajeva 2005, 224). This undermines the variety of retellings, the

significance of illustrations, and the retellings as individual works in their own right. It masks the

reading strategy described by John Stephens as “top-down,” which assumes content, language, and a

specific didactic and moral purpose of the material (1992, 19). 25

Most picturebooks do not include page numbers. Children’s literature scholars may use none

(Nikolajeva and Scott 2006) or count pages beginning with the title page (Graham 2005, 209).

37

and “r” represent verso (left-hand page) and recto (right-hand page). This system is used

throughout the study. When no “v” or “r” is present, the page number is as designated in the

book. This is the story as told in words:

God saw the wickedness of people (3r).

God announces (to no specified person) that he will wipe the people and animals off

the earth (3v).

God saw that Noah was good and told him to build an ark (5r).

God says (presumably to Noah) to enter the ark with his family and pairs of animals

(5v).

Noah did as God told him. God made it rain; all the people and all the animals died

(7r).

No one was left except those on the ark (7v).

God remembered Noah and made the rain stop and water go down. The ark came to

rest on Mount Ararat (9r).

Noah sent out a dove; in the evening it returned with an olive twig so Noah knew

water did not cover the whole earth (9v).

The earth has dried and God tells Noah (explicitly) to leave the ark with his family

(11r).

God added that the animals and other creatures should also leave the ark and breed

(12r).

Noah did as he was told and offered a sacrifice. “God was pleased with Noah and

thought, ‘I will let them live and fill the earth with their children’”26

(13r).

God blesses Noah and his sons (explicitly) and tells them: “I shall be your friend and

the friend of your children, and of your children’s children.” He tells them about the

rainbow and that there will never again be a flood to end all life (13v).

This retelling, like the majority, is told via an extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator, or what is

more commonly (but less precisely) referred to as the omniscient narrator. It is worth using

being specific because the distinctions between narrators return later in this study. An

extradiegetic narrator narrates at the “highest level,” and he frames the whole narrative

(Genette 1980, 228-231). A heterodiegetic narrator is not an actor in the story he narrates

(Genette 1980, 244-245). Extradiegetic heterodiegetic narration creates distance and can

emphasize the fictionality of the story. The narrator opens the retelling with: “There were

many people on the earth.” There is no temporal indicator here. This is followed by “God saw

26

This is the only example I have found where this possible interpretation of the Genesis narrative has

been incorporated into the children’s retellings so explicitly.

38

that they were getting more and more wicked.” As with Genesis, the narrator knows what

God sees, thinks, and says. The retelling is focalized almost exclusively through God seeing,

speaking, and remembering. It is very unusual in its content because it is fairly evenly split

between summaries (216 words) and God’s direct speech (173 words). Summaries (and

indirect speech) more easily allow for narratorial and (with Bible retellings) didactic

commentary (Nikolajeva 2002, 230). Unusually, this retelling includes very little

commentary. The tag used to introduce God’s speech is always “said” (and, once, “added”),

rather than something such as “ordered,” “asked,” or “encouraged,” which have different

connotations. There are very few adjectives or adverbs, which can create a different

atmosphere. Compare, for example, the narrative’s “All the people and all the animals died”

with “All the people and all the animals died screaming/slowly/quickly.” The verbal narrative

is relatively neutral. Rather, this particular retelling is given its atmosphere through the

illustrations.

My interpretations of the images are removed (as far as is possible) from the context

given by the words, with the exception of the title: The Flood. The title establishes that the

narrative will be about a flood. Informed readers may guess which flood (especially given the

fact that the book is part of a series called “Bible Stories”).

Black people are in slavery to an Arab-looking violent overlord (2v–3r).

Black people are poorly dressed and starving outdoors in the desert. Behind them a

large building is surrounded by lush greenery (3v–4r).

A few people (probably men) of unclear ethnicity and wearing neat clothes build a

giant boat surrounded by greenery (4v–5r).

A person loads the boat with exotic animals including polar bears, gorillas, and

walruses (5v–6r).

Lush greenery and buildings are flooded; unidentifiable people drown (6v–7r).

The animals are safe on the boat (7v–-8r).

The boat floats on an empty sea with a brown shape under it in the water (8v–9r).27

An elderly, Caucasian man with a grey/white beard and hair welcomes a dove with a

twig onto the boat (9v–10r).

27

It may be possible to interpret some of the brushstrokes in the image as fish, but this is too unclear

to record as such.

39

The elderly man, clearly the leader, stands at a door (presumably of the boat) with

other finely dressed, happy-looking Caucasian people (10v–11r).

The boat has landed on fresh soil, where the animals disembark (11v–12r).

The leader and 3 people stand next to a dead lamb lying on a rock with its throat slit

(12v–13r).

One person, a few rabbits, and numerous gazelles live in lush greenery with a clear

blue waterfall and a rainbow (13v–14r).

This story would probably be recognizable as the flood story to many readers, but it is clearly

not the same narrative as the one told through the words. The focalization is totally different:

there is no God. Only 3 images seem to be focalized through and by a central human (in the

verbal text Noah is referred to frequently). This is done differently in each of the images (9v–

10r, 10v–11r, 12v–13r). The first image is of an elderly, Caucasian man welcoming a dove

with his arm outstretched (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. Noah reaches

for the dove. (Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier.

The Flood. DBID 260.)

40

This is the closest we get to a close-up of a person’s face, indeed any close-up, in the whole

book. The sudden change highlights the man and his relationship with the dove (Nodelman

1988, 151–152). Perspective affects the atmosphere, emotions, and point of view (who is the

focalizer?) of the story (Kiefer 1995, 123, 134; Lewis 2001, 170). It focalizes the image

through the man, something that is further highlighted because he is framed in the window of

the ark. This ark fills the majority of the page. The image is further emphasized because it is

the only image in the whole retelling that is fully framed with a white border. It only exists on

the recto of the doublespread (two visible pages), and it does not cross the gutter (the join in

the doublespread, the inside of the spine).28

When this degree of focalization is contrasted with the other illustrations of this man,

we can see the significance of this specific image. In the next illustration the man is clearly

the leader of a group of people standing in a door (presumably to the ark, 10v–11r). His arms

are stretched wide, blocking the people standing next to and behind him. Although he is the

central figure of the image, he is now in long shot: his whole body can be seen and his face is

proportionately small and undetailed. If one did not know by the clothes, it would be possible

to claim that this was a different person: the facial hair is different, the skin color rosier, and

the face sterner. The reader is not being encouraged to empathize with him. He is the

focalizer, but he is not as dominant as in the previous image.

The third illustration is of the man and 3 other people standing next to a dead lamb

(12v–13r, Fig. 2).

28

As terminology in picturebook analysis develops, the spelling “doublespread” is one of at least 4

used (“double spread,” “double-spread,” and “double-page spread” being the others) in addition to the

word “opening.” I use “doublespread” as it mirrors the now widely accepted spelling of “picturebook”

(p. 10, note 12). It emphasizes the significance of regarding the facing pages as a whole.

41

Seeing Noah from behind puts the reader into Noah’s shoes: the reader is looking at what

Noah is looking at (Nodelman 1988, 150). The lamb combined with the frontal appearance of

the other humans suggests a priestly role. Hence, if the reader is placed in Noah’s shoes she

might be considered to be placed in the position of the dominant, authoritative figure.

However, the man’s back is on the left-hand side of the page. This means that the focalization

is malleable. Does the reader look through the man (Noah), focalize the men (the sons), or the

slaughtered lamb? This complexity creates ambiguity and unpredictability. It highlights how

difficult it can be for illustrators to portray specific messages and for readers to interpret them

as may (or may not) have been intended.

The ambiguities are exacerbated when we read the words and images together. Before

I outline my new and final interpretation for the narrative, let me revisit the picture of Noah

in the window, but this time as part of the doublespread and therefore with the words. The

Figure 2. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. Noah and the family pray.

(Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier. The Flood. DBID 260.)

42

dove is on the facing verso, heading straight toward Noah’s hand. The dove, like Noah, is

centered on his page, but here he is directly above the words. The words are located on the

center of the page and the background is completely white, unlike other pages. This focuses

attention on the dove with the olive leaf. The top line of the words begins and ends with the

words “Noah” and “dove.” This typesetting, combined with the strong design of the page

formatting, highlights the two actors on the doublespread. Each actor dominates his own

singlespread, but together they make a broader picture. That Noah is most forcefully

highlighted in the image with the dove leads one to ask whether the dove is the more

important actor. Perhaps it is the relationship between the two that is the focus. This is

particularly because the instance where we see Noah from behind and being authoritarian and

priestly is when we also see a dead animal. The ambiguity present in that latter image is

certainly not there with the image of the dove: it is a wholly positive representation of Noah

and a bird. The level of complexity added to the doublespread when it is seen as a whole is

but one example of how different the verbal and visual narratives are:

God sees the wicked Arab-looking slave master (2v–3r).

God announces he will wipe the earth clean of all people: the poor people, the black

slaves (3v–4r, Fig. 3).

God tells the good Noah to build the ark. Noah does this surrounded by lush greenery

and wearing nice clothes: to be privileged and wealthy is to be good (4v–5r).

God states that the animals must be saved. They are loaded onto the ark (5v–6r).

Noah obeys God. God made it rain. Those in the lush greenery drown (6v–7r).

Although not shown, those in the desert also drown; the animals are safe (7v–8r).

God remembers Noah (had God forgotten Noah?): the ark and its occupants are alone

on the water but safe (8v–9r).

Noah is a privileged, elderly, Caucasian male and he is the central human figure. He is

helped by a dove (9v–10r, Fig. 1).

God tells the human occupants of the ark to leave the ark; they are all Caucasian,

while the black, poor, starving slaves and Arab-looking slave masters drowned (10v–

11r).

God says that the animals must leave the ark and breed: they do so; the new earth has

no desert (11v–12r).

The lamb is being sacrificed, which God likes. God decides to let humanity procreate

(12v–13r, Fig. 2).

43

God blessed Noah with whom he is friends, along with his descendants, all of whom

are Caucasian. The ideal living environment is a green land with controlled, pretty,

and drinkable water (13v–14r).

All 3 of the readings are different and none of them are fixed. Individual readers interpret and

understand material differently, not least because reading strategies affect interpretation. I

have suggested reading the words, images, and then the combined narrative like this because

it demonstrates the significant differences between the 3 narratives. It also enables a more

focused analytical approach. Realistically, however, this is not how illustrated books and

picturebooks are read; nor are they intended to be. Different books encourage different ways

of encountering the object: as a toy, to uncover hidden narratives, as informational discovery

books. Readers experience books differently depending on their reading age, where they read

it (at home, in school, at church), who they read it with, and whether they read it, listen to it

being read, or play with it. The different reading strategies offer multiple incipits and

ultimately affect interpretation.

The focus of the combined word/image narrative is not the flood, the destruction, or

Noah but the land and the people. From my perspective as the poetic interpreter, two

messages dominate: to be poor and black (or an Arab and slave driver) is bad and will lead to

God’s punishment; to be prosperous and white leads to God’s reward. This can most clearly

be seen in the doublespread where God announces the destruction (Fig. 3, p. 44).

In it the slaves are in the desert starving and thirsty. In the background there is a lush

green area with at least one imposing building. The implication, one hopes, is that the people

living in the buildings are the wicked to be drowned, but this is not what happens. The people

who survive are clearly prosperous and Caucasian. The message is that to be poor and black

is to live in desolation in the desert; to be prosperous and white is to live in lush greenery.

Lush greenery with plenty of water is the idyllic situation of God’s new world. This

marginalizes (if not demonizes) nonwhites and those not fortunate enough to live in the

44

idyllic countryside. I hope and expect that this was not the intention of the authors and

illustrators, but the combination of two very different narratives create this dichotomy. There

does not seem to have been a coherent approach to the material. The words and images act in

counterpoint to each other, presenting different ideological perspectives (Nikolajeva and

Scott 2006, 25).

This brief case study of one retelling has demonstrated the complexities associated

with reading words and images together. In doing this I have been able to highlight some of

the methods authors, illustrators, and producers use to create narrative. By exploring these

methods we can uncover ideological viewpoints expressed in the retellings, whether intended

or not. I use some of the approaches to narrative explored in this Chapter in the next, when I

discuss the Genesis flood story.

Figure 3. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. The people starve in front of luxury.

(Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier. The Flood. DBID 260.)