The Good News

Chapter 2 examines the Doré Bible illustrations through the lens of the illustrated periodical press. Having begun his career as a newspaper illustrator, Doré approached the Bible with the same aim toward comprehensiveness and compositional variety that one finds in the illustrated press of the time. At the same time, Doré’s images are rooted in the history of biblical representation and are thus dialectically situated in the discourses of contemporaneity and tradition. This chapter also takes into account the role that wood engraving played in the realm of illustration and in Doré’s practice specifically. Used primarily for book and periodical illustration, wood engraving became the most ubiquitous printed form in nineteenth-century Europe. Doré’s aim to elevate the medium to a higher status resulted in a set of illustrations that simultaneously derive from the visual language of journalistic imagery and depart from it in significant ways.