The Graphic Novel

by Baetens, Jan

• ISBN13: 9789058671097
• ISBN10: 9058671097
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Leuven Univ Pr

Summary

The essays collected in this volume were first presented at the international and interdisciplinary conference on the Graphic Novel hosted by the Institute for Cultural Studies (University of Leuven) in 2000. The issues discusses by the conference are twofold. Firstly, that of trauma representation, an issue escaping by definition from any imaginable specific field. Secondly, that of a wide range of topics concerning the concept of "visual narrative," an issue which can only be studied by comparing as many media and practices as possible. The essays of this volume are grouped here in two major parts, their focus depending on either a more general topic or on a very specific graphic author. The first part of the book, "Violence and trauma in the Graphic Novel", opens with a certain number of reflections on the representation of violence in literary and visual graphic novels, and continues with a whole set of close readings of graphic novels by Art Spiegelman (Maus I and II) and Jacques Tardi (whose masterwork "C'?tait la guerre des tranch?es" is still waiting for its complete English translation). The second part of the book presents in the first place a survey of the current graphic novel production, and insists sharply on the great diversity of the range in the various 'continental' traditions (for instance underground 'comix', and feminist comics, high-art graphic novels, critical superheroes-fiction) whose separation is nowadays increasingly difficult to maintain. It continues and ends with a set of theoretical interventions where not only the reciprocal influences of national and international traditions, but also those between genres and media are strongly forwarded, the emphasis being here mainly on problems concerning ways of looking and positions of spectatorship.

Table of Contents

Introduction	7	(6)
Jan Baetens
Part I: Trauma and Violence Representation in the Graphic Novel
Section A
Over the Top in the Aftermath of The Great War: Two Novels, Too Graphic	13	(10)
Laurie Kaplan
Fredric Werthnm, Spiegelman's Maus, and Representations of the Holocaust	23	(8)
James Reibman
The Telling Face in Comic Strip and Graphic Novel	31	(16)
Ed Tan
Section B
``It's about time'': The Chronotope of the Holocaust in Art Spiegelman's Maus	47	(14)
Sue Vice
``These papers had too many memories. So I burned them''. Genealogical Remembrance in Art Spiegelman's Maus. A Survivor's Tale	61	(18)
Ole Frahm
``I Looked Just Like Rudolph Valentino'': Identity and Representation in Maus	79	(12)
Gene Kannenberg Jr.
``Et il n'y eut plus d'espoir''. On Fiction and History in Jacques Tardi's Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec	91	(10)
Anke Gilleir
What Haunts a Soldier's Mind: Monsters, Demons and the Lost Trenches of Memory. Representations of Combat Trauma in the Works of Jacques Tardi	101	(14)
Michael Hein
Part II: Contemporary Graphic Novels and Practices
Section A
Redrawing the West: Jack Jackson's Comanche Moon	115	(16)
Marni Sandweiss
Carol Lay's Joy Ride: How to Become Yourself By Being Someone Else	131	(8)
Heike Elisabeth Jungst
The Dual Nature of Apocalypse in Watchmen	139	(6)
Jeffrey Lewis
Narrative Specularity and Sociocritical Stakes in the Contemporary French-Speaking Comic Strip Production	145	(12)
Jean-Louis Tilleuil
Texte, Image, Recit: The Textual Worlds of Benoit Peeters	157	(10)
Libbie McQuillan
Section B
Relatedness: Aspects of Textual Connectivity in Comics	167	(14)
Mario Saraceni
Hypertextual Experiences of World War I	181	(10)
Jack Post
The Time It Takes	191
Patrick Maynard