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"The dove, the rainbow, and the unicorn": 170 years of the flood story retold for
children in words and pictures
England, E.E.E.
Publication date 2013
Document Version Final published version
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England, E. E. E. (2013). "The dove, the rainbow, and the unicorn": 170 years of the flood story retold for children in words and pictures.
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“THE DOVE, THE RAINBOW, AND THE UNICORN”:
170 YEARS OF THE FLOOD STORY RETOLD FOR
CHILDREN IN WORDS AND PICTURES
Emma England
“THE DOVE, THE RAINBOW, AND THE UNICORN”:
170 YEARS OF THE FLOOD STORY RETOLD FOR
CHILDREN IN WORDS AND PICTURES
ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus
prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom
ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie,
in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op dinsdag 14 mei 2013, te 14:00 uur
door
Emma Elizabeth Elsbeth England
Promotoren: Prof dr. A. Brenner Prof. dr. J. W. van Henten
Dedicated to my parents, without whom this would never have come to pass
My mum, Jen, gave me a love of books, fantasy, and the Bible 22 May 1949 – 27 October 2009
My dad, Les, gave me a love of life and laughter 31 July 1948 – 5 February 2013
Acknowledgments
Help can come in the most unexpected places. My niece, Jazmin, was four when she explained a story she had enjoyed learning about in class. It was Noah’s Ark and it included a boat, a man called Noah, rain, lots of animals, and (most importantly for her) an octopus. There was no God, not even a Bible. Jazmin’s short story reinforced my ideas in the most uplifting of ways. It is impossible to know how many such stories, fleeting remarks or brief questions influenced my research project. Even those I am aware of are too numerous to mention, but I owe the people who offered them thanks. Some friends and colleagues deserve special recognition because they have proofed chapters, looked at the database, dragged me out for dinner, forced me to sit at my desk, bought me beer, made me laugh, made me think, questioned me, challenged me, listened and inspired, sometimes at great distances, sometimes just on Facebook. They are: Julie Anastasia Barton, Máire Byrne, Shannon Cole, Lidia Domenica Matassa, Ernst Eisma, Caroline Emery, Helen Jacobus, Edward James, Anne Kustritz, Ingeborg Löwisch, Farah Mendlesohn, and Jonathan Stökl. I owe the most thanks to John Lyons; he has been a general all-round good guy, and I want him by my side when the revolution comes.
Practical help came from The British School in the Netherlands, where I worked for most of the duration of writing this study, and who were more than flexible with the working hours so that I could enjoy my research trips. Many of these trips were to Gladstone’s Library, where the always helpful Warden, Peter Francis, approved bursaries for me. The majority of my visits were to the British Library, where the Rare Books and Music Reading Room staff were helpful, amusing, and gracious, despite the enormous workload I gave them. Financially, I could not have undertaken this study without the generous support of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, under the expert management of the wonderfully friendly Eloe Kingma.
Arian Verheij and August den Hollander were instrumental in the very early stages of this research project, their meetings and discussions helped me to shape the work. Of course, this current work would not exist and would certainly be poorer without the expertise and patience of my supervisors Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten. I thank them both for encouraging me to develop my own style, for helping me to develop a self-critical eye, and for teaching me the power of editing. Most especially, I was incredibly lucky to have supervisors who were willing to take a risk in letting me pursue a new topic involving many fields of research. Any flaws in this work are entirely my own.
My sister, Laura, kept me grounded and stopped me from living entirely in my work. She provided me with the essential supplies for life: laughter, tea, fizz, and biscuits. Finally, I thank my husband, Robert, he not only made it financially possible for me to return to my studies, but he also supported me with technical assistance and by reading the thesis, not just once but twice! Most of all, he was and remains my emotional anchor and it is his unwavering belief in me and this project that has led me here. He deserves more love and gratitude than it is possible for words to express.
ii
Contents
List of Figures v
List of Charts ix
List of Supplementary Material xi
Abbreviations xiii
Part I: The Foundations
1. Introduction 1
Telling the Untold Story 2
The End of the World 3
Bible Publishing and Children, 1837-2006 6
The Journey So Far: Academia and Children’s Bibles 11
The Journey Continues: Structuring the Thesis 14
2. Methodology and Terminology 17
Why “Retelling”? 17
Data Collection 21
Quantitative Content Analysis 24
Who is the Reader of the Book? 28
Reading Narratives 31
Reading Words and Images 36
3. The Genesis Story 45
Narrative Boundaries and Structure 46
The Genesis Story/The Actors’ Stories 55
A. The Restriction of Life (6:1-4) 55
B. The Crime and Punishment (6:5-7, 11-13, 17; 7:4) 60 C. Noah the (Relatively) Righteous (6:8-10, 22; 7:1, 5) 64
D. The Ark (6:14-16) 68
E. The Occupants and Contents of the Ark (6:18-7:5) 69
F. The Flood and the Destruction (7:6-24) 77
G. God Remembers and the Waters Abate (8:1-5) 81
H. The Birds (8:6-12) 84
I. The Beginning of the New Creation (8:13-19) 86
J. Noah’s Sacrificial Offering Changes God’s Mind (8:20-22) 87 K. God Gives Humanity and Animals New Rules (Genesis 9:1–7) 90 L. God Makes a Covenant with Humanity and the Animals
(Genesis 9:8–17) 93
M. Noah’s Sons Fulfil God’s Command (9:18-19) 95
iii
Part II: Flood Retellings for Children
4. God 99
Anthropomorphization in the Retellings 99
Emotional Anthropomorphization 100
Mind, Body, and Spirit 103
What Does God Look Like? 111
The Punisher/Savior God 125
The Diminished God 130
5. The Survivors 139
The Named Men 139
Noah 140
Shem, Ham, and Japheth 154
The Unnamed Women 158
Noah’s Wife 159
Noah’s Sons’ Wives 165
6. The Other Humans 173
The Wicked, Violent, and Corrupt 174
Adam and Eve (Genesis 3) 174
Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16) 178
Humanity and the Daughters of Man (Genesis 6:1-4) 184
Crime and Criminals 191
Neighbors and Mockery 194
The Adults and Children that Drown 198
Adults 200
Children 203
Adults, Children and Didactic Embedding Narratives 211
7. The Animals and Fictitious Creatures 217
The Increasing Dominance of Animals 218
Contradictions, Change and Conflict in the Treatment of the Animal World 224
Salvation 225
Destruction 229
Birds 232
Sacrifice 235
Meat and Fear 238
Covenant 240
The Increasing Fictionality of the Animals 243
Historical Anachronism: Dinosaurs 244
Anthropomorphized and Talking Animals 246
Impossible Creatures 251
iv
Part III: From History to Fantasy, or Why Do the Unicorns Miss the Ark?
8. Retellings in the Water Margins of Fantasy Literature 261
Understanding Fantasy Literature 261
Unraveling the Knots in Fantasy Criticism 262
Author/Reader; Reality/Impossibility 265
Beyond the Impossible 268
Recognizing Fantasy in Children’s Bible Retellings 271
9. The Flood as Fantasy Literature 287
Can Biblical Narratives Be Fantasy? 287
The Flood and Its Fantasy Tropes 294
The Supernatural in Three Generations 294
Time 296
Epic Scale 297
Impossible Spaces 299
Secondary Worlds 300
The Genesis Flood Narrative as Immersive Fantasy 303
The Fantastic Is Dealt with Casually 304
The Protagonist Mediates the Information 305
The Protagonist Is the Antagonist 305
The Story Is Focused Inward, Shielding the External 306
The Flood Story: A Fun, Cozy Lesson in Truth? 307
Entertaining Didacticism 307
Cozy Catastrophe 308
Truth Reframed 310
Part IV: From “God’s Change of Heart” to “Noah’s Ark”
10. From “God’s Change of Heart” to “Noah’s Ark” 317
The Flood Story Reinterpreted 317
Let’s Worship God! 321
Let’s Learn with Noah! 323
Let’s Cook with Noah’s Wife! 324
Let’s Have Fun with Animals! 325
Let’s Pretend! 326
And So It Begins: Practical Uses for the Research Findings 330
Looking to the Future in Children’s Bible Research 332
Expanding the Field 333
Digital Humanities 338
Replicating the Methodology 340
i) Corpus Selection 340
ii) Design and Pilot 341
iii) Date Entry 343
iv) Data Analysis 343
v) Qualitative Analysis 344
v
Appendix A: Core Statistical Data 351 Flood Retellings for Children, Short Title Bibliography 357
Secondary Bibliography 373
Index of Biblical References 401 “The Dove, the Rainbow, and the Unicorn”: 170 Years of the Flood Story
Retold for Children in Words and Pictures, Summary 407 “De duif, de regenboog en de eenhoorn”: de zondvloed herverteld voor
vi
List of Figures
The figures are presented with the following information:
Figure number. Illustrator. Date of Publication. My Description of the Image. Author. Book Title. Unique Database Identification Number (DBID #).
Figure 1. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. Noah reaches for the dove.
Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier. The Flood. DBID 260. 39 Figure 2. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. Noah and the family pray.
Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier. The Flood. DBID 260. 41 Figure 3. Sylvie Montmoulineix. 1997. The people starve in front of luxury.
Alain Royer and Georges Carpentier. The Flood. DBID 260. 44 Figure 4. Giuliano Ferri. 2001. Smoke rising to the heavens, to God.
Michael McCarthy. The Story of Noah and the Ark. DBID 124. 108 Figure 5. Unknown illustrator. [c. 1866]. A light shines on the ark. Is it God?
Anon. Half Hours With The Bible. DBID 135. 113
Figure 6. Alain Savino. 1984. Noah looking up at a bright light in the sky. Is it God?
Brigitte Bloch-Tabet. Noah’s Ark. DBID 195. 114
Figure 7. Jane Ray. 1990. God as the sun blowing wind over the ark.
Jane Ray. Noah’s Ark. DBID 212. 117
Figure 8. W. H. H. (signature). 1901. God comes to Noah as a hand in light.
Rev. Charles C. Bell. The Story Of The Promise. DBID 193. 119 Figure 9. Sophie Windham. 1997. Rain clouds, sun, wind all crying. Is this God?
Geraldine McCaughrean. Unicorns! Unicorns! DBID 216. 122
Figure 10. Sophie Windham. 1988. God in the clouds.
Anon. Noah’s Ark. DBID 268. 123
Figure 11. Arthur Dixon. [c. 1921]. Noah oversees the building of the ark.
E. B. Trist. The Dawn Of The World. DBID 111. 147
Figure 12. Alex Ayliffe. 2004. Noah builds the ark.
Lois Rock. Let’s Read The Noah’s Ark Story. DBID 121. 148
Figure 13. Marcia Williams. 2004. God and Noah look similar (detail).
Marcia Williams. God And His Creations. DBID 273. 150
Figure 14. C. Gandolfo. [c. 1966]. Noah oversees the entrance to the ark (detail).
A. Scalfo. The Flood and the Tower of Babel. DBID 170. 153 Figure 15. Mike Dickinson. 1997. Mrs Noah serves Mr Noah.
Mike Dickinson. Where Next, Mr Noah? DBID 204. 162
Figure 16. Elmer Boyd Smith. 1905. The women work, the men relax.
Elmer Boyd Smith. Noah’s Ark. DBID 258. 167
Figure 17. Unknown illustrator. 1980. Eve gets blamed.
Leonard J. Matthews. Noah & The Ark. DBID 4. 177
Figure 18. Jim Roberts. 1971. Cain and Abel.
Norman C. Habel. When the Purple Waters Came Again. DBID 23. 181 Figure 19. Jim Roberts. 1971. Cain has changed.
Norman C. Habel. When the Purple Waters Came Again. DBID 23. 182 Figure 20. Arthur Baker. 1981. Rural idyll.
vii Figure 21. Arthur Baker. 1981. Wicked city.
Kathy Singleton. Noah’s Big Boat. DBID112. 187
Figure 22. Diana Mayo. 1999. Humans fighting (detail).
Mary Auld. Noah’s Ark. DBID 160. 192
Figure 23. Marcia Williams. 2004. The criminals.
Marcia Williams. God And His Creations. DBID 273. 193
Figure 24. Steve Björkman. 1999. Neighbors mocking Noah.
Jennifer Rees Larcombe. A Boat Full of Animals. DBID 42. 195 Figure 25. Steve Björkman. 1999. The mocker drowns.
Jennifer Rees Larcombe. A Boat Full of Animals. DBID 42. 201 Figure 26a. L’Esperto S.p.A. 1973. The destruction.
Bridget Hadaway and Jean Atcheson. The Bible For Children
Illustrated in Colour. DBID 175. 202
Figure 26b. L’Esperto S.p.A. 1973. The destruction (detail).
Bridget Hadaway and Jean Atcheson. The Bible For Children
Illustrated in Colour. DBID 175. 208
Figure 27. Stefan Lemke and Marie-Luis Lemke-Prichen. 1978. Wicked children.
Anon. Noah and the Ark. DBID 8. 204
Figure 28. W. Lawson. 1922. Drowning Babies.
Isa J. Postgate and Rev. Charles Hart. A Book About The Old Testament
For Children. DBID 110. 206
Figure 29. Unknown illustrator. [c. 1865]. Animals enter the ark while Noah prays.
Anon. The Child’s Own Book Of Scripture Pictures. DBID 142. 219 Figure 30. Estelle Corke. 2005. Noisy animals enter a tiny ark.
Sophie Piper. Noah And The Flood. DBID 123. 221
Figure 31. Elmer Boyd Smith. 1905. Sea creatures around the ark.
Elmer Boyd Smith. Noah’s Ark. DBID 258. 222
Figure 32. Kristina Stephenson. 2006. Smiling, colorful, happy fish.
Sarah Toulmin. Baby Bible. DBID 48. 223
Figure 33. Alain Savino. Animals are used as waiters and lamp-holders.
Brigitte Bloch-Tabet. Noah’s Ark. DBID 195. 228
Figure 34. Unknown illustrator. 1980. Animals suffer in the destruction.
Leonard J. Matthews. Noah & The Ark. DBID 4. 231
Figure 35. Estelle Corke. 2005. An independent raven.
Sophie Piper. Noah And The Flood. DBID 123. 233
Figure 36. Estelle Corke. 2005. The dove flies to Noah.
Sophie Piper. Noah And The Flood. DBID 123. 233
Figure 37. W. ThomasSo. 1858. A lamb is slaughtered for sacrifice.
Anon. The Children’s Bible Picture Book. DBID 55. 237
Figure 38. Feodor Rojankovsky. [c. 1953]. Dinosaurs died in the flood (detail).
Elsa Jane Warner. The Golden Book Of Bible Stories. DBID 313. 245 Figure 39. Michael Foreman. 1980. Fictional animals compete with humans
and lions for the last rock.
Mike Dickinson. City of Gold And Other Stories From The Old Testament.
DBID 293. 252
Figure 40. Ron Miller. 2002. Fantasy art reminiscent of Jonah.
Cover for Allen M. Steel’s novella “Across the Eastern Divide” in
Asimov’s Science Fiction. 274
Figure 41. Unknown illustrator. 1984. Uncanny eye and giant snail.
viii Figure 42. Harold King. 1972. Absurd destruction.
Michael Flanders. Captain Noah And His Floating Zoo. DBID 65. 277 Figure 43. Annegart Fuchshuber. 1983. God’s disembodied hand.
Gertrud Fussenegger. Noah’s Ark. DBID 200. 279
Figure 44. Arthur Baker. 1981. Noah “pushes” Mrs Hippo.
Kathy Singleton. Noah’s Big Boat. DBID 112. 281
Figure 45. Maxwell Lawrence Dorsey. 1998. Mice and alternative realities.
Cristina Goodings. Bartimouse Aboard The Ark. DBID 277. 282
Figure 46. Marcia Williams. 2004. Angels in a secondary world.
x
List of Charts
Chart 1. The Yahwist and Priestly flood stories 47
Chart 2. The role of God in Genesis 126
Chart 3. Noah’s actions as represented in all retellings 144
Chart 4. When the Purple Waters Came Again (Habel and Roberts 1971, DBID 23) 180
Chart 5. Representation of Genesis 6:1-4 in the retellings 184
Chart 6. Representation of destruction-related motifs 199
Chart 7a. Entering and leaving the ark in images 218
Chart 7b. Entering and leaving the ark in words 218
xii
List of Supplementary Material
The following material can be found on the accompanying DVD.
DVD Introduction
File Name: 0 READ THIS FIRST
Retellings of the Genesis Flood Narrative Published in England for Children (1837-2006) File Name: Retellings
Note: This file is not compatible with Macs Database Reader Guide
File Name: Database Reader Guide Database Specification
File Name: Database Specification Database Query Descriptions
xiv
Abbreviations
ANE Ancient Near East
BDB The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Francis Brown, S. S.
Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers. 2005. CDCH Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines.
Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. 2009. DBID (+ number) Database Identification Number
DCH The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 7 volumes.
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press and Sheffield Phoenix Press. 1993-2010. EF The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Edited by John Clute and John Grant. London:
Orbit, 1999.
JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society. 2003.
KBL The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler and
Walter Baumgartner. Revised by Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm. Translated and Edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson. 5 volumes. Leiden: E.J.Brill. 1994-2000.
KJV King James Version
NASB New American Standard Bible NEB New English Bible
NIV New International Version NLT New Living Translation
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
OECL The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Editor-in-Chief Jack Zipes.
4 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006.
1
Part One, Chapter One: Introduction
Once upon a time there lived a man called Noah, a name that means “Comfort.”
Blanche Winder, Bible Stories for Children, circa 1930
Analyzing the epigraph reveals much. “Once upon a time” suggests the flood story is a fairy tale set in a distant place and space, simultaneously real and imaginary. During this unknown time “there lived a man called Noah,” the focus of the story. We also learn that this man’s name “means ‘Comfort.’” The reader can therefore expect him to be a “comforting” character. This single sentence also enables us to surmise that the producers of the text have interacted with their Bible beyond Genesis 6–9. They have at least read Gen 5:29, perhaps in the King James Version (KJV), where “comfort” is used.
By looking at Bible stories written for children, we can do more than provide a literary analysis; we can also uncover changing attitudes to the biblical stories by those outside academia and the church. We can see hints at belief in the historical accuracy, literacy, and morality of the biblical stories. We can also see the changing use and influence of biblical scholarship. We can uncover ideologies about age, gender, and class. As the first, primary, and sometimes only medium through which people read or hear biblical stories, children’s Bible retellings are one of the most culturally significant means through which the Bible is reimagined.
In this study I explore retellings of the Genesis flood story published for children in England between 1837 and 2006 (170 years). I present a new methodology for recording them in a way that enables diachronic and synchronic patterns to be uncovered. The focus is on the presentation of actors and motifs in words and images, particularly addressing how words and images function together and in counterpoint. Analyzing these patterns through a narratological lens, I expose ideologies relating to (1) how and why actors in the Genesis
2
flood story have been marginalized or enhanced, and (2) how, why, and which actors in the retellings are othered, based on normativity of gender, class, size, race, age, and species. A key aspect of this analysis is recognizing the increasing dominance of illustrations and the growth in cartoon styles. This recognition makes it possible to (3) witness the gradual ascendency of the fantastic mode and fantasy genre as storytelling and didactic devices. The analysis of the fantastic mode, the ideologies uncovered, and patterns of commonality and rarity in the retellings is compared with and sometimes sheds light on the Hebrew Bible narrative.
Telling the Untold Story
“There were giants on the earth in those days.” This, the inconsequential opening to the immense verses on Noah’s ark and the primordial flood were what got me when I was a child. At six I was the proud owner of an
illustrated comic book Bible in which the plangent words of the King James Version appeared in bubble captions as though they came from the mouth of Superman. Though the illustrator couldn’t go that far because the writers of Genesis didn’t, I imagined those giants, the waters rising inexorably up their bodies until they closed over a last howl of desperation. That’s what the King James Version was for me as a child: the ultimate brutal myth full of terror with occasional happy endings. (Schama, 2011)
Simon Schama’s words describe his most memorable encounter with the flood story: a story beginning with giants (after the Nephilim in Gen 6:4).1 As well as describing it as a brutal myth, he discusses the absurdity of Noah’s age (600, Gen 7:6), the inclusion of mosquitoes
1
References to the biblical text are to the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Unless otherwise stated, all English citations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
3
on the ark, but also the lyrical magnificence of the dove returning with the olive leaf. These are the thoughts and memories Schama took into adulthood.
The significance of retellings of the Bible for children is impossible to quantify and hard to overstate. Children’s stories have an impact; they are used to educate and socialize as well as to entertain. Many children’s Bibles also have another purpose: “to give their young readers a correct idea of the contents of Holy Scripture” (Bottigheimer 1994, 347). In this regard, they are similar to commentaries. What children read influences their perspective of the world. Understanding what they read is therefore a critical academic endeavor. Yet children’s Bibles are one of the least discussed forms of biblical interpretation.
There are many possible approaches to studying children’s Bibles, including child psychology, theology, and book history. I focus on literary readings of the retellings in order to uncover the explicit and implicit ideologies they represent. I use the Genesis flood story (6:1–9:19) as the case study because it is almost certainly the most commonly retold Hebrew Bible story for children (Neff 2001; Person and Person 2005, 57; Gillhouse 2009, [128]). My work uncovers the ideologies in the text with a specific focus on the relationship between word and image. I also explore whether there is any relationship between the retellings and contemporaneous commentaries on the Genesis narrative. In this regard, the flood story is an interesting choice because there are clear changes in its interpretation.
The End of the World
Excitement, danger, adventure, a God who walks with man, supernatural beings, and an inconceivably large boat—these are the things that make the flood story interesting. It is entertaining in the same way that disaster and monster movies are.2 Lots of people die and
2
The flood story has been retold on film, including Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (2009). In 2014 Darren Aronofsky’s megabudget ($130 million) film Noah will be released. The Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe will play Noah.
4
there is endless destruction, but, ultimately, it is all good fun. Except the flood story isn’t that much fun. Humanity dies and the victory is given to a small handful of people. We then get to see the human hero sacrifice a vast number of the animals he saved.
The narrative appeals to me precisely because of the complex relationship I have with it. I enjoy reading it and trying to imagine what the ark was like. What must it be like to be one of the only people left on earth? What happened to the fish? What are Nephilim? In addition to that curious pleasure, I am horrified by the sheer terror of total annihilation. I am horrified by a God who could decide, apparently on a whim, that everyone and everything must die. I am shocked that the human hero seems to accept this without question. I am disgusted that the hero would slaughter animals seemingly en masse. To remove the invigorating or depressing elements of the narrative is to deny critical components of the text. The flood story needs to be read and understood as a whole. It is interesting, then, that the flood story is a cultural text not only prolifically abridged and retold for children but also analyzed through limited lenses by biblical scholars.
From an academic perspective, flood scholarship has almost exclusively been conservative and confessional (King 1892; Richardson 1959; Amos 2004; Harper 2009), (pseudo)scientific3 (Fairholme 1840; Filby 1970), and/or anthropological (Redford 1837; Bremmer 1998). These studies tend to be religious analyses discussing whether the flood happened, and/or the presence and history of global flood myths. This relatively unchanging analysis of the story occurs despite the advent of postmodern influences on the discipline (feminism, postcolonialism).4 Nonetheless, one area of study has been making more of an
3
The plethora of pseudoscience around the flood leads some scientists to frustration: “Media portrayals of a catastrophic turning point in human history on the scale of the biblical deluge have diverted serious attention away from its real geographical and cultural importance” (Yanko-Hombach, Gilbert, and Dolukanov 2006).
4
Exceptions include Vandermeersch’s “Where will the Water Stick? Considerations of A Psychoanalyst about the Stories of the Flood” (1998) and Dundes’s The Flood Myth (1988).
5
impact in the last 40 years (although it has a much longer pedigree): reception history.5 This field, in which scholars are often engaged unconsciously, considers how texts have been presented, rewritten, visualized, and understood in different media and by different communities (cf. Roberts 2011, 1–8).6 The majority of scholarly writings discuss how elements of the Hebrew Bible story have been interpreted in early Jewish and Christian works. The most frequently cited example is Jack P. Lewis’s A Study of the Interpretation of
Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature (1968; cf. Lewis 1984, 224–239;
Deurloo and Zuurmond 1991).7 In parallel to these are studies that focus on the impact geology, anthropology, and other scientific developments have had on the reception of the narrative (Young 1995; Cohn 1996; Pleins 2003). Relatively few studies have presented retellings since the medieval period, including literature, art, and film (cf. Goetsch and Walsh 1997, 48–53; Swindell 2010, 38–63). A remarkable example is Richard W. Unger’s The Art
of Medieval Technology: Noah the Shipbuilder (1991). It discusses the influence of
shipbuilding practices on illustrations of the ark. By analyzing flood retellings for children, I am not only telling the largely untold story of children’s Bibles, I am also pushing the boundaries of flood scholarship further into the arena of reception history.
5
The terms “reception history,” “reception studies,” “reception theory,” and “reception criticism” have different implications but are often used interchangeably within biblical studies. For convenience, and because of the nature of this study and how the reception of the flood has been studied, I use “reception history.”
6
In 1998 Stephen Prickett wrote about the relationship between the Bible, literature, and art, claiming that “there is still little evidence that the historical centrality of that relationship to biblical studies has been fully recognized, or that its implications for the future have been considered. It must form part of the agenda for twenty-first-century biblical studies” (175). Despite the launch of journals such as
Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception (www.relegere.org) and Biblical Reception (Sheffield
Phoenix Press), by 2012 the process of embedding reception history within the biblical studies academy has progressed relatively little. At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Biblical Studies (Amsterdam), a series of 3 sessions around the theme “What Is Reception History?” took place. It involved discussion of the relative lack of progress and the treatment of reception history within the discipline as a whole. A volume based upon the sessions and edited by myself and W. John Lyons is forthcoming [2013].
7
Other examples discuss Jubilees (van Rutten 1998, 66–85), the works of the Christian polemicist Aphrahat (Kolyun-Fromm 1997, 57–71) and the Septuagint (Wright III 2010, 137–142).
6
Bible Publishing and Children, 1837–2006
My research covers 170 years, ending in 2006. By stopping in 2006, I was able to include the opening years of the twenty-first century, making the study as contemporary as possible. The start year of 1837 was consciously chosen as it was the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation. The Victorian era roughly correlates with the amalgam of developments that most heavily influenced the material. These include changing attitudes to children, the growth of education and literacy, the so-called golden age(s) of children’s literature (1865–1910, 1950–1970, late twentieth century), and the development of the mass market. This study is not a social or publishing history of children’s Bibles, and so I cannot discuss the history of children’s Bibles in detail. A brief history is nonetheless useful.
Children have been reading since at least the classical era, but it was not until relatively recently that texts were written in English specifically for children.8 One of the earliest known examples is The Babees Book offering advice about behavior around others (c. 1475; Stevenson 2011, 184). Since then increasing numbers of texts have been produced for children, with varying degrees of accessibility. They were always moralistic and sometimes seemed to include attempts to entertain child readers. The types of texts included catechisms, verses, and alphabets (Muir 1985, 23–33; Mandelbrote 2003, 19–39). Children were expected to read the whole Bible as soon as they could read their letters (Thwaite 1972, 20–21). The first major sea change happened with the publication of John Locke’s Some Thoughts
Concerning Education (1693; cf. Grenby 2011, 99–102). He decried promiscuous reading of
the Bible chapter by chapter, as it lacks pleasure and encouragement of both reading and religion (Locke 1693, 186–189). John Locke suggested that a good “History of the Bible” should be presented chronologically with various elements omitted until the child was old
8
Gillian Adams argues that children’s literature is anything read by a child and that Sumerian literature is the oldest children’s literature because it is “an imaginative literature which may or may not have been originally composed for younger children or directed at them, but which was considered particularly suitable for them and to which they were regularly exposed” (1986, 26).
7
enough to benefit from them (1693, 226).9 At least in part, this led to Bibles for children becoming more widespread during the eighteenth century, although they were only accessible by the wealthy (Mandelbrote 2003, 19–39). John Locke’s philosophy may have also influenced Nathaniel Crouch’s (pseudonym “R. B.”) Youth’s Divine Pastime (1691). It includes one of the earliest retellings of Noah’s Ark. The retelling is illustrated with a woodcut of Noah praying and the animals (including unicorns) entering the ark. It includes the somber verse:
Yet did he warn before he struck,
Noah was sent to tell
They by their Sins would God provoke To cast them down to Hell
(from the scanned copy in Muir 1985, 32)
Compared with earlier and contemporaneous texts for children, it could be considered entertaining (Muir 1985, 33–34).
The eighteenth century witnessed the first major children’s publishers. John Newbery is widely credited as being the first English publisher to make children’s books a profitable product although many publishers came before him (Darton 1970, 122–140; Muir 1985, 59). He published an Abridged Bible in 1758. During this time, female involvement in books and education for children also grew. Mary Wollstonecraft published Thoughts on the Education
of Daughters, in which she claimed that reading the Bible too early would inhibit spiritual
growth (1787, 53–54). Arguably, most significant of all was Sarah Trimmer, who wrote numerous scripture histories and distributed scripture books to charities and schools. She also emphasized the significance of pictorial scriptures for children. It has been claimed that she
9
He also suggested the need to turn to God as well as science for explanations of biblical events such as the Deluge (Locke 1693, 229). He explains the flood by claiming that God may have temporarily adjusted the center of gravity (Locke 1693, 229).
8
was the first woman in the world to be called an author of a children’s Bible (van der Meiden 2009, 24). Women have been heavily involved in publishing books for children ever since (cf. van der Meiden 2003, 20-26).
By 1800, 600 books a year were published in Britain for children (Clark 1996, 473). Without detailed bibliographic research it is not possible to know how many of these could be defined as children’s Bibles or biblical retellings. Nevertheless, most would have been morally didactic and religiously inspired, sometimes including references to biblical verses and narratives. Moving into the nineteenth century, we can note that relatively few complete Bibles were specifically produced for children. Abbreviated Bibles would be cheaper for the growing numbers of readers in the lower socioeconomic strata. Furthermore, Bibles specifically translated or reprinted for children were not seen as necessary to replace the
Authorized Version (Digby and Searle 1981, 11–20). The Bible was still considered the core
of education for at least the first 60 years of the nineteenth century (Cunningham 2006, 66; Spitzer 2006, 68). Indeed, before 1870 most not-for-profit schools were run by churches, resulting in denominational education. Bibles were also considered critical to the good standing of society.10
The flood story itself varied in popularity over the years (at least in proportion to the number of books I read, see Appendix A, page 353). It became proportionately more common in the last 30 years of the nineteenth century. This was almost certainly because of the combined effect of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), George Smith’s presentation of the “Chaldean Account of the Deluge”/Epic of Gilgamesh (1872), and Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena (1878, English translation 1885). The
10
Bibles were considered so important that they were published in vast numbers and were often sold at a loss by voluntary organizations and Bible publishers (Howsam 1991, xiv–xv). Between 1837 and 1847 the British and Foreign Bible Society purchased and distributed 58.9% of the 10,938,497 Bibles and Testaments produced by the privileged presses (Queen’s Printer, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press; Howsam 1991, 118).
9
Prolegomena further developed source criticism (see pages 46-48), reframing the
documentary hypothesis into a coherent theory. His ideas became widely accepted so that the Torah/Pentateuch was broadly believed to have been written at different times by different people and edited together. The increased influence on the understanding of the Genesis flood story from those outside of the church, specifically scientists, historians, and biblical scholars, helped to popularize the narrative.11
By 1938 the number of titles published a year had increased from 600 in 1800 to 1629 (Hunt 1995, 192). The major change, however, took place around the 1970s. By 1971 the number of children’s titles published a year was 2001. Yet only 4 years later the number was 2688 (Watkins and Sutherland 1995, 289). It is little wonder, then, that of my retellings, 60% were published after 1970. The increase is indicative of many things, not least technological developments resulting in cheaper and easier full-color printing (Feather 2006, 211–219; Sipe 2011, 240). This is reflected in my corpus. A third of the flood retellings published before 1970 do not have illustrations of the flood, as opposed to less than 1% of those published since 1970. The post-1970s retellings are almost always in full color, having been predominantly black and white throughout the nineteenth century with color only becoming proportionately more common in the 1920s.
Tony Watkins and Zena Sutherland neatly summarize the state of children’s publishing since 1970, and it is just as applicable for flood story retellings as the trade in general:
Contemporary children’s literature is a series of paradoxes…there has been an overproduction of some kinds of books – notably picturebooks – and a
11
Numerous other influences affected the publication of children’s Bible retellings, including secularization, the history of education being inextricably connected to Sunday schools and English churches, and the two world wars. The relationship between social change and children’s literature (including children’s Bible retellings) is symbiotic. Changes in society affect content; content educates the people who change society. Studying children’s literature can offer (social) historians “crucial and immensely revealing data” (Grenby 2008, 202–203).
10
general underfunding of education; some boundaries have been pushed back with metafictional novels and postmodern picturebooks – and yet internationalism has led to bland commercialism. (1995, 289)12
The “bland commercialism” refers to multinational conglomerates swallowing up imprints in the 1980s and 1990s. This resulted in a greater focus on the bottom line rather than trying to balance the relationship between profit and quality or variety (Taxel 2011, 484–485).13 It has had significant, and depending on one’s perspective, devastating effects on the presentation of the flood story in the retellings. This is most clearly seen with Lion Publishing, which was founded in 1971 “in order to publish books about Christianity” (lionhudson.com). It was enormously successful and has dominated the publishing of children’s Bible retellings. It has, however, gone through multiple changes, having numerous subsidiaries and merging with Angus Hudson in 2003 to become Lion Hudson. Of the 263 books in my corpus, at least 21 are by one of the various incarnations of Lion Publishing, even though 189 publishers are represented.14 They have undoubtedly published interesting and challenging retellings but they have also swamped the market with generic, unimaginative books. The more unusual and creative retellings are often published by smaller, independent publishing houses
12
A picturebook is a heavily illustrated book in which there is an interdependence between words and images (p. 36). Throughout this study the spelling “picturebook” is used, rather than “picture book,” because it deliberately highlights the picturebook as a unique form of communication. The word “picturebook” is increasingly preferred by scholars specializing in picturebook research, see especially American Picturebooks (Bader 1976), The Potential of Picturebooks (Kiefer 1995),
Reading Contemporary Picturebooks (Lewis 2001), How Picturebooks Work (Nikolajeva and Scott
2006), and Postmodern Picturebooks (Pantaleo and Sipe 2008).
13
Another major influence was the cut in funding to public schools and libraries in the 1970s and 1980s. This reduced the impact of librarians as consumers; hence quality books became less commercially viable thereby helping the growth of bland commercialism (Taxel, 2011, 480).
14
As an indicator of the incredible success of Lion Publishing, Publisher’s Weekly describes how: “In 1985 Lion, a British coedition specialist, published one of the first story Bibles to catch the American eye. Initial sales of The Children's Bible in 365 Stories (sic) by Mary Batchelor, illustrated by John Haysom, were impressive, and lifetime sales of the US edition, now distributed by Cook, have reached one million,” Neff 2001, publishersweekly.com.
11
including Barefoot Press (McCarthy 2001, DBID 12415) and Walker Books (Williams 2004, DBID 273; Morpurgo 2005, DBID 296). Perhaps ironically, their works are often marketed through the use of the incredibly popular authors. Despite, or perhaps because of their creativity, these books are not used as templates for retellings; they are uniquely engaging. As I demonstrate they nevertheless share key patterns with the more generic examples.
In 1991, 6154 new titles were published (Watkins and Sutherland 1995, 290). By 2006, 29% of books sold in the UK were in the children’s market (Clark and Phillips, 2008, 53 [citing Richardson UK Publishers, 13]). It would be a major study in its own right, establishing the proportions dedicated to children’s Bible retellings, not least because the classification of them is so sporadic and ill defined. The numbers do, however, accurately reflect the flood retellings for children as influenced by external forces. This, then, is the basic background of the books themselves. What of scholarship discussing children’s Bible retellings?
The Journey So Far: Academia and Children’s Bibles
Studies on children’s books and the Bible have progressed little since Perry Nodelman discussed how much, and why, children’s literature studies ignored Bibles and religious material (1986, 54–57).16 Even in the Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult
Literature (Wolf et al. 2011) there is almost no mention of religious publishing or children’s
Bibles. This is despite the fact that one of the editors (Coats) supervised one of the few doctoral dissertations about children’s Bibles: Elizabeth Gillhouse’s Framing Eve:
Contemporary Retellings of Biblical Women for Young People (2009). Primarily, the thesis is
a feminist reading of Garden of Eden retellings. The study also includes a discussion about
15
“DBID” refers to the unique number given to each retelling on the accompanying database; this ensures maximum integration between the analysis, database, and retelling.
16
Bibles are usually regarded as didactic texts, the critical study of which has been slow to develop (Glaisyer and Pennell 2003, 1).
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how the retellings can be used in different teaching scenarios. There is little direct engagement with the biblical text in the thesis.
Willem van der Meiden’s doctoral thesis was published as ‘Zoo heerlijk eenvoudig’:
Geschiedenis van de Kinderbijbel in Nederland (2009). It has set the bar high for studies of
the history of children’s Bible publishing in individual countries.17
It takes a predominantly book historical, theological, and pedagogical approach to the material. There is very little interaction with the Bible. The retellings are not discussed as children’s literature using the methodologies or vocabulary used within children’s literature studies.18 Like Gillhouse’s thesis, this dissertation utilizes what is undoubtedly the key text in children’s Bibles research: Ruth Bottigheimer’s The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (1996). The book is a sweeping analysis of how at least 14 biblical stories have been presented in 7 countries/geographic regions across 500 years. It is an impressive piece of work, but it is limited by its enormous scope. The book is focused through the lens of social history and as such there is little analysis of the retellings as interpretations of biblical stories. Another monograph is more focused and is by the historian Penny Schine Gold:
Making the Bible Modern: Children’s Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America (2004). The first half of the book discusses how the Bible is used in educating
Jewish children, specifically in America. The second half includes an analysis of children’s Bible retellings, including looking at the representation of women, God, and children. It primarily discusses “the form and content of Bible story books in terms of their context in
17
This work highlights the interactions between producers of children’s Bibles and the lack of commonality in scholarly discussions thereof. From van der Meiden’s study we can surmise that European discussion of children’s Bibles is more advanced than elsewhere but is rarely used in Anglo-American work. Indeed, van der Meiden uses few Anglo-American texts in his research.
18
The definition of children’s literature is a hotly contested issue. It has historically been defined as material published for children for pleasure rather than (or at least more than) education. Despite being widely challenged, and no longer being fully accepted, this approach still dominates children’s literature studies, thereby limiting the material studied (cf. Darton 1970, 1; Hunt 1988, 42–64; Bottigheimer 1998, 190–210; Jones 2006, 287–315).
13
inter-war America” (Schine Gold 2004, 178). It also offers a brief comparison with Israeli books and Christian books (179–204). The strength of the book is the way in which it socially locates the retellings within the culture and pedagogical practices of their time. This necessarily restricts the detail and depth to which the retellings are analyzed.
Arguably the most developed argument about how retellings of biblical narratives function is John Stephens and Robyn McCallum’s Retelling Stories, Framing Culture:
Traditional Story and Metanarrative in Children’s Literature (1998). They only include one
chapter dedicated to children’s Bibles, but it should be a critical work for children’s Bible scholars.19 It suggests 3 categories for defining and exploring retellings of the Bible for children and in the next Chapter I outline what they are (see pages 18-20).
To my knowledge the only dedicated volume to children’s Bibles by biblical scholars is Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What Is in the Picture? edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh Pyper (2012). It includes articles on a range of perspectives, including one by myself, partly drawn from this study. The volume also includes responses by Ruth Bottigheimer and the biblical scholar and children’s Bible reteller Cheryl Exum. The volume is an excellent example of the different ways people explore and understand the concept of “children’s Bibles.” In the volume is one article on comic-book Bibles (Dupertuis, 271-289), two articles on animated Bibles (Scholz, 99-120; Vander Stichele, 291-310), and a primer (Lee, 173-192).
Finally, numerous articles have been published in separate journals and edited volumes. Most of these are by children’s literature scholars and practitioners (teachers or librarians). I refer to many of them throughout this study. Specifically regarding the flood story retold for children, two scholars stand out: the biblical scholar Francis Landy and the
19
I say that it should be because it is not. Willem van der Meiden’s Zoo Heerlijk Eenvoudig (2009) does not refer to it. Likewise, in Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What is in the
Picture? (2012) only mine (217, 223) and Melody Briggs’s (166) article cite it. This further
14
librarian Kathy Piehl. These articles demonstrate the diversity of flood retellings but also the drawbacks in not having a systematic interdisciplinary approach.20 Francis Landy, in an otherwise engaging article, describes the book How Mrs Monkey Missed the Ark (Kerr 1992, DBID 226) as “utterly innocent” (2007, 371). At the heart of children’s literature studies is the concept that no (children’s) book is “innocent.” Conversely Kathy Piehl, a children’s librarian and scholar, quotes an unspecified translation of an unspecified verse (it is actually Gen 8:1a) describing it, without justification, as “The pivotal verse in the Genesis account of Noah and the flood” (1999). Biblical scholarship teaches us that while statements like this can be made, they are never fact and always require justifying and explaining.
While children’s Bible research has been gradually increasing over the last 20 years, it is still underrepresented. The significance of the relationship between words and images and the growing importance of illustrations in Children’s Bibles and Bible retellings is particularly understudied. A key focus of this study is the word/image relationship as a deliberate or unintentional method of representing ideological viewpoints.
The Journey Continues: Structuring the Thesis
This thesis is in 4 parts. The first, “The Foundations,” presents the critical background information including this introduction. The second Chapter is my methodology. In it I explain how I sourced, catalogued, and classified the retellings on a custom-built database.21 I demonstrate how I approach the retellings as an informed adult reader. The Chapter closes with an introduction to my close reading strategy, incorporating narratology and children’s
20
Despite the limited amount of work undertaken on the flood story retold for children, there is already a canon. This is one of the drawbacks of all literature studies and is something I try to avoid by studying such a large corpus (263 retellings; p. 24). One of the most often cited among them is Peter Spier’s Caldecott Award-winning Noah’s Ark (1988, DBID 227).
21
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literature research. The third Chapter is my reading of the Genesis flood story as a final form narrative. It focuses on the actors and asks, “what is the story about?”
Part Two of the thesis (Chapters Four—Seven), “Flood Retellings for Children,” is an analysis of the corpus itself. Each Chapter explores a specific actor or group of actors and issues arising out of their representation. The discussion is influenced and informed but not necessarily governed by the quantitative analysis undertaken of the material, the methodology of which is described in Chapter Two. In Chapter Four, “God,” I focus on the dynamics of interpreting God’s anthropomorphism in words and images, specifically the mental, emotional, corporeal, and spiritual components. I discuss how God’s roles as punisher and destroyer are balanced. The Chapter is tied together with the theme of the ways in which God has gradually been diminished and why. Chapter Five, “The Survivors,” includes discussion of the humans alive before, during, and after the flood (Noah and the 7 members of his family). The specific focus is on gendering and the impact of changing illustration methods, especially after 1970. I also discuss how (often) the future generations of humanity are presented in the retellings and the implications for this. In Chapter Six, “The Other Humans,” I focus on the people who the retellings blame for the destruction. These include people who are performing explicit actions that could be described as wicked, violent, or corrupt, as well as additional actors. The latter group includes Cain, Adam and Eve, and the nonbiblical neighbors who mock Noah for building the ark. I explore the implications of blaming different people and the marginalization of different groups this can engender. Keeping with the theme of marginalization, I discuss the presentation of the people who drown during the flood itself, including men, women, and children. Finally in this Chapter I discuss human actors who have been added to the retellings but who are not part of the flood story itself, specifically those in embedding narratives. These actors may, for example, be parents narrating the flood story to their own children. The final Chapter in Part Two is Chapter
16
Seven, “The Animals.” In it I use an animal centric reading strategy to analyze how animals are presented in the retellings. I focus on the apparent contradictions in the biblical text and how they are navigated in the retellings. This includes reflections on the protection as opposed to destruction of the animals, and the covenant with the animals as opposed to humanity being given permission to eat them. The latter half of the Chapter looks at the increasing fictionalization of the animals in the retellings. This includes anachronistic dinosaurs as well as more obvious forms of fictional being such as the talking animals and unicorns. This leads into a brief intermission where biblical giants and angels are discussed, before moving on to the third part of the study.
In Part Three (Chapters Eight—Nine), I explore how the retellings have increasingly been created as fantasy literature. In Chapter Eight, “Retellings in the Water Margins of Fantasy Literature,” I introduce key concepts in fantasy literature before considering key techniques for making a story a fantasy, using retellings from my corpus as examples. This includes a presentation of artistic techniques in the creation of fantasy in picturebooks. In Chapter Nine, “The Flood as Fantasy Literature,” I apply my reading of the retellings to the Genesis flood story. I explore various motifs as fantastic, including time, impossible spaces, and epic scale. I then look at the structure of the Genesis narrative as fantasy, specifically immersive fantasy (Mendlesohn 2008, 59–113). Finally I consider the new avenues of exploration this analysis leads to for both the Genesis narrative and the retellings. The fourth and final part of the study, “From ‘God’s Change of Heart’ to ‘Noah’s Ark,’” includes the conclusion and appendix. In Chapter Ten, “The Flood Story Reinterpreted,” I build on the conclusions developed throughout the thesis. This analysis is used to suggest practical applications for the findings. I suggest ways in which my methodology can be expanded. This includes proposals for new directions in children’s Bible retellings. Appendix A presents the core statistical data.
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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
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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).
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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
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
