Reading bande dessinee

Ann Miller

Description

Bande dessinée, or French comic strip, has always provoked controversy—labeled a danger to literacy and moral standards by its detractors, this polarizing art form has at the same time been deemed worthy of prestigious national centers in France and Belgium. Reading Bande Dessinée, the first English-language overview and critical study of this intriguing medium, traces the history and examines the cultural implications of French comics.
Ann Miller’s groundbreaking book not only parses bande dessinée as visual narrative art, but it shows readers how to study it, as she places these comic strips in the context of debates surrounding the form’s legitimization, approaches it from a cultural studies perspective, and examines bande dessinée in its relationship to subjectivity in the body. Miller here illuminates such disparate concepts as Astérix and the mythologizing of Frenchness, historical memory and the Algerian war, and characterizations of the new managerial bourgeoisie in the context of Francophone comic strips. Reading Bande Dessinée will help lay a scholarly foundation for the growing interest in this captivating art form in the Anglophone world.

 

“[Miller’s] analysis ranges from psychoanalytic to Marxist interpretations and is a terrific introduction to this neglected aspect of the comic world.”—Roger Sabin, Observer

 

“The characteristics of Ann Miller’s writing for me abound in this latest work; concise prose, beautifully crafted sentences, complex analysis illustrated with crystal clear exemplification. This is a work for a wide readership. It is a work for enriching subject knowledge for teachers and students of French and/or the visual arts at advanced levels.”—Ann Swarbrick, Language Learning Journal
 
 “The work provides both a key analysis for scholars of the bande dessinée, as well as a manual for a modern application of critical theory.”—Dr. Laurence Grove, University of Glasgow

 

“This exceptional work of synthesis by Ann Miller must be applauded. She succeeds in providing a detailed and complete panorama of bande dessinée a cultural phenomenon, an achievement which is all the more remarkable given that the author makes successive use of multiple scholarly approaches, moving from the cultural history of the production and reception of bande dessinée to the theoretical reflections on the medium, the sociological analysis and the problematic of the autobiographical self in graphic literature.”—Harry Morgan

 

 

 

 

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Dessin
• Art Plastique
• Arts plastiques
• Cartooning
• Techniques
• EDUCATION
• General officer
• Comics
• Cultural studies
• Art
• General
• Technique
• Comic

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781841509969
• Langue: English

Extrait

Reading bande dessin e :
Critical Approaches to French-language Comic Strip
Ann Miller
Reading bande dessin e :
Critical Approaches to French-language Comic Strip
Ann Miller
First Published in the UK in 2007 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First published in the USA in 2007 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2007 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-177-2/EISBN 978-184150-996-9
Printed and bound by the Gutenberg Press, Malta
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART 1 The History of bande dessin e
1. From the Nineteenth Century to the 1960s: bande dessin e Becomes a Children s Medium, and then Starts to Grow Up
2. The 1970s: Expansion and Experimentation
3. The 1980s: Recuperation by the Mainstream
4. From the 1990s to the Twenty-First Century: The Return of the Independent Sector
PART 2 Analytical Frameworks
5. The Codes and Formal Resources of bande dessin e
6. Narrative Theory and bande dessin e
7. Bande dessin e as Postmodernist Art Form
PART 3 A Cultural Studies Approach to bande dessin e
8. National Identity
9. Postcolonial Identities
10. Social Class and Masculinity
PART 4 Bande dessin e and subjectivity
11. Psychoanalytic Approaches to Tintin
12. Autobiography and Diary Writing in bande dessin e
13. Gender and Autobiography
Notes
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the many friends and colleagues whose interest and encouragement has helped in the writing of this book. Hugh Starkey introduced me to bande dessin e in the first place, and has always been a thoughtful interlocutor. I have also benefited from the advice and critical support of Peter Fawcett, Phil Powrie and Keith Reader. The solidarity and scholarship of fellow members of the International Bande Dessin e Society have been much appreciated, and I am particularly grateful to Teresa Bridgeman, Laurence Grove, Dominique Le Duc, Wendy Michallat and Murray Pratt. Scholars from North America have widened my perspective on bande dessin e , and I would like to thank Bart Beaty, Mark McKinney and Clare Tufts for sharing their insights with me. Many thanks too to Vittorio Frigerio, who published a much earlier version of parts of Chapter 13 in Belphegor Vol. 4 No 1, November 2004. Like all those who work in the field of bande dessin e , I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Jan Baetens, Thierry Groensteen, Bruno Lecigne, Pascal Lef vre and Beno t Peeters, whose views I hope not to have misrepresented in the following pages. A number of bande dessin e artists have been generous with their time and their expertise, including Baru, Charles Berberian, Frank Margerin, Jean-Christophe Menu, Chantal Montellier, Fabrice Neaud and Tanitoc. Needless to say, none of the above should be held responsible for anything that I have written.
I would also like to acknowledge the support of colleagues in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Leicester, and the University itself for the granting of a semester of study leave. I have, in addition, relied greatly on the unfailing efficiency of the librarians at the University of Leicester and the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessin e. Sam King at Intellect has been a great help through the process of producing the manuscript. To Tim and Chris, thanks for IT back-up and moral support, and to Malcolm for sanity, his own and most of mine. Tintin and Milou, thanks for sitting on all those first drafts.
I NTRODUCTION
This book is for students of French-language comic strip, or bande dessin e , and for more general readers. It is divided into four sections, which offer four different ways of approaching the medium, associated with different theoretical perspectives. Frameworks for analysis are made very explicit, and no prior knowledge of terminology is assumed.
The first part offers a historical overview, with the longest and most detailed section being devoted to contemporary bande dessin e , emphasizing the artistic impact of independent publishing houses since the 1990s. The history of the medium is in part the history of its struggle for legitimacy, and each chapter includes a section which considers the evolution of the cultural status of bande dessin e and of the theoretical approaches applied to it.
The second part offers frameworks within which to analyse the formal features of bande dessin e . It is based on a case-study approach, so that the terms and concepts introduced in each chapter are predominantly exemplified from one album, or, in the case of Chapter 7 , one series. Chapter 5 introduces basic terms and concepts of analysis for the study of sequential visual narration and text-image relations; Chapter 6 draws on narrative theory, and Chapter 7 considers the potential of bande dessin e as a postmodernist art.
The third part adopts a cultural studies approach to the medium, discussing bande dessin e in relation to questions of identity. Chapter 8 focuses on national identity, Chapter 9 on postcolonial identities and Chapter 10 on the intersection of class and masculinity. Each chapter begins by resuming relevant theoretical issues, before offering detailed case studies of a small number of albums. Readers looking for Ast rix in this book will find him in Chapter 8 , which presents a survey of the multiple ways in which the character, and the series, have been taken to represent Frenchness.
The fourth part considers the representation of subjectivity and the body in bande dessin e . Readers seeking Tintin will find him in Chapter 11 , which offers a critical discussion of the way in which four different writers have brought psychoanalytic theory to bear on the unconscious of the Moulinsart household. Chapters 12 and 13 are both based on autobiography and diaries in bande dessin e , a major genre since the 1990s. Chapter 12 considers these works in the light of theories of autobiography, and Chapter 13 focuses on questions of gender and embodiment in bande dessin e autobiographical work.
The book aims to introduce readers to a wide spectrum of French-language bande dessin e from France and Belgium. It makes some reference to work from Switzerland and Qu bec which has been published in France, but work from other francophone countries is not represented here. There is a vigorous bande dessin e publishing industry in Africa, but it is beyond the scope of this book to consider the context of that production. There is another significant omission, which is the large and influential Flemish-language production in Belgium.
One key problem for anyone writing about bande dessin e is the question of illustrations. It is not possible to reproduce the pages being discussed in more than a few cases, without doubling the size of the book. The illustrations included relate to the discussion of formal features in Part two, since it is here that they are most useful. The albums used as case studies have been chosen partly for their ready availability, and we hope that in a modest way this book will encourage the spread of b d philie amongst an English-speaking readership.
P ART O NE
T HE H ISTORY OF BANDE DESSIN E
The following four chapters cover the history of the medium from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The longest and most detailed chapter is the last, which covers the period from 1990 to the present. There is no attempt to be exhaustive, and a more detailed treatment of fewer albums has been preferred to a, perhaps more representative, listing of a larger number. The selection of artists and albums is inevitably subjective, but, from the 1970s, it is partly influenced by the decisions of juries at the annual Angoul me Festival. However, in order to avoid encumbering the text with references to awards won by artists or albums, a list of Angoul me prizewinners is provided in the appendix on page 247.
The history of bande dessin e necessarily includes consideration of its struggle for recognition as an art form. Debates around this subject have frequently been conducted in terms drawn from the work of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Familiarity with Bourdieu s work is not taken for granted here, and key terms and concepts are introduced before they are used in the sections on the status of the medium.
Chapter 1
F ROM THE N INETEENTH C ENTURY TO THE 1960 S: BANDE DESSIN E B ECOMES A C HILDREN S M EDIUM, AND THEN S TARTS TO G ROW U P
1.1 The origins of bande dessin e
It is not easy to identify the first bande dessin e (literally drawn strip ) in history, particularly since the term did not take over from the rather vague word illustr s until the 1950s. Indeed, in 1996, the CNBDI, the French national bande dessin e centre, became involved in a spat with the CBBD, its Belgian equivalent, on this very issue, and a few American scholars joined the fray, on both sides of the argument. The CBBD chose that year to celebrate the centenary of the medium, declaring it to have been invented by the American Richard Outcault in 1896, when his strip The Yellow Kid and his New Phonograph appeared in the New York Journal . The CNBDI riposted by mounting an exhibition in honour of the 150th anniversary of the death of the Swiss Rodolphe T pffer, whose L Histoire de Monsieur Vieux Bois had been written in 1827. 1 What was at stake was a definition of the medium and, behind it, the larger question of the position of bande dessin e within the field of cultural production, an issue with which the first part of this book wil