{"id":717,"date":"2017-04-05T14:40:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T18:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/?p=717"},"modified":"2017-04-05T14:40:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T18:40:14","slug":"ghastlycrumb-tinies-and-postmortem-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/uncategorized\/ghastlycrumb-tinies-and-postmortem-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghastlycrumb Tinies and Postmortem Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d read Gorey’s The Ghastlycrumb Tinies\u00a0<\/em>before\u2013 I knew a girl in elementary school who used to recite it a lot too, how’d you like to be her first grade teacher\u2013 but I’d never been able to put a really solid meaning behind. I felt compelled to either understand it as a statement or accept it as just a kind of morbid nursery-rhyme wordplay, and I always chose the second one, because it was just easier that way.<\/p>\n

Our discussion in class has helped me put a meaning to it, though, and now I can actually say I like it. It really works for me as a story of neglect, of children left alone to tragic ends. To take this a step further, I like the thought of it as a memorial. So much of Gorey’s style is in homage to the Victorian era, which was one of grimness and high mortality as much, maybe more, as it was one of formality and grandeur. It was the era of post-mortem photography, particularly of children, which the illustrations here remind me a bit of. I won’t put any in this post, because they are disturbing and sensitive things,\u00a0but I’ve seen some before in museums and I think they share a sense of memoriam, not to mention an\u00a0astonishing morbidity. Most of the illustrations are, of course, slightly pre-mortem. But the whole goal of photographs like that anyway are to remember the child as they were, in an era where that could likely\u00a0be the only image of them ever captured.<\/p>\n

I’m not denying the elements of humor, obviously. But I think the work can also stand as as an homage to the neglected children of history, especially in the\u00a0dark and newly-industrialized landscape of Victorian times that Gorey so often portrays the melodrama and tragedy of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d read Gorey’s The Ghastlycrumb Tinies\u00a0before\u2013 I knew a girl in elementary school who used to recite it a lot too, how’d you like to be her first grade teacher\u2013 but I’d never been able to put a really solid meaning behind. I felt compelled to either understand it as a statement or accept it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ghastlycrumb Tinies and Postmortem Photography”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}