Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:39:33.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Hillary Chute
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Comics—A form once considered pure junk—Is sparking interest in literary studies. I'm as amazed as anybody else by the comics boom—despite the fact that I wrote an English department dissertation that makes the passionate case that we should not ignore this innovative narrative form. Yet if there's promoting of comics, there's also confusion about categories and terms. Those of us in literary studies may think the moves obvious: making claims in the name of popular culture or in the rich tradition of word-and-image inquiry (bringing us back to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages). But comics presents problems we're still figuring out (the term doesn't settle comfortably into our grammar; nomenclature remains tricky and open to debate). The field hasn't yet grasped its object or properly posed its project. To explore today's comics we need to go beyond preestablished rubrics: we have to reexamine the categories of fiction, narrative, and historicity. Scholarship on comics—and specifically on what I will call graphic narrative—is gaining traction in the humanities. Comics might be defined as a hybrid word-and-image form in which two narrative tracks, one verbal and one visual, register temporality spatially. Comics moves forward in time through the space of the page, through its progressive counterpoint of presence and absence: packed panels (also called frames) alternating with gutters (empty space). Highly textured in its narrative scaffolding, comics doesn't blend the visual and the verbal—or use one simply to illustrate the other—but is rather prone to present the two nonsynchronously; a reader of comics not only fills in the gaps between panels but also works with the often disjunctive back-and-forth of reading and looking for meaning. Throughout this essay, I treat comics as a medium—not as a lowbrow genre, which is how it is usually understood. However, I will end by focusing attention on the strongest genre in the field: nonfiction comics.

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 2 , March 2008 , pp. 452 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Arnold, Andrew. “A Graphic Literature Library.” Time 21 Nov. 2003. 6 Dec. 2007 <http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,547796,00.html>.Google Scholar
Baker, Steve. Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Beronä, David A. “Pictures Speak in Comics without Words: Pictorial Principles in the Work of Milt Gross, Hendrik Dorgathen, Eric Drooker, and Peter Kuper.” Varnum and Gibbons 19–39.Google Scholar
Bosmajian, Hamida. “The Orphaned Voice in Art Spiegelman's Maus I and II.” Literature and Psychology 44.1–2 (1998): 1–22.Google Scholar
Brown, Joshua. “Of Mice and Memory.” Oral History Review 16.1 (1988): 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, Charles. Black Hole. New York: Pantheon, 2005.Google Scholar
Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park: Penn State UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Chute, Hillary. “Ragtime, Kavalier and Clay, and the Framing of Comics.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Chute, Hillary, and DeKoven, Marianne. “Introduction: Graphic Narrative.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 52 (2006): 767–82.Google Scholar
Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1998.Google Scholar
Cohen, Martin S. “The Novel in Woodcuts: A Handbook.” Journal of Modern Literature 6 (1977): 171–95.Google Scholar
Dowd, D. B., and Reinert, Melanie. “A Chronology of Comics and the Graphic Arts.” Strips, Toons, and Bluesies. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2004.Google Scholar
Drucker, Johanna. A Century of Artists' Books. New York: Granary, 1995.Google Scholar
Eisner, Will. A Contract with God: A Graphic Novel by Will Eisner. 1978. New York: DC Comics, 1996.Google Scholar
Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. Tamarac: Poorhouse, 1996.Google Scholar
Elmwood, Victoria. “‘Happy, Happy Ever After’: The Transformation of Trauma between Generations in Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale.” Biography 27 (2004): 691–720.Google Scholar
Ewert, Jeanne C. “Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman's Maus.” Narrative 8 (2000): 87–103.Google Scholar
Shoshana, Felman, and Foreword, Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1992. xiii–xx.Google Scholar
Gardner, Jared. “Reading Out of the Gutter: Early Comics, Film, and the Serial Pleasures of Modernity.” Repetition. The Eng. Inst. Harvard U, Cambridge. 10 Sept. 2004.Google Scholar
Geis, Deborah R., ed. Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's “Survivor's Tale” of the Holocaust. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2003.Google Scholar
Gopnik, Adam, and Varnedoe, Kirk. High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture. New York: Museum of Mod. Art; Abrams, 1990.Google Scholar
Gordon, Ian. Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890–1945. Washington: Smithsonian Inst., 1998.Google Scholar
Harrison, Randall. The Cartoon: Communication to the Quick. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981.Google Scholar
Harvey, Robert C. “Comedy at the Juncture of Word and Image: The Emergence of the Modern Magazine Gag Cartoon Reveals the Vital Blend.” Varnum and Gibbons 75–96.Google Scholar
Harvey, Robert C. “Describing and Discarding ‘Comics’ as an Impotent Act of Philosophical Rigor.” Comics as Philosophy. Ed. Jeff McLaughlin. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2005. 14–26.Google Scholar
Jeet, Heer, and Worcester, Kent, eds. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Marianne. “Collateral Damage.” PMLA 119 (2004): 1209–15.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-memory.” Discourse 15.2 (1992–93): 3–30.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Marianne. “Marianne Hirsch on Maus.” Interview with Martha Kuhlman. Indy Magazine Winter 2005. 14 July 2006 <http://64.23.98.142/indy/winter_2005/kuhlman_hirsch/index.html>..>Google Scholar
Hungerford, Amy. The Holocaust of Texts: Genocide, Literature, and Personification. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. “Postmodern Provocation: History and ‘Graphic’ Literature.” La Torre 2 (1997): 299–308.Google Scholar
Huyssen, Andreas. “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno.” New German Critique 81 (2000): 65–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iadonisi, Rick. “Bleeding History and Owning His [Father's] Story: Maus and Collaborative Autobiography.” CEA Critic 57.1 (1994): 41–56.Google Scholar
Inge, M. Thomas. Comics as Culture. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1990.Google Scholar
Janson, H. W. “Glossary: Cartoon.” History of Art. New York: Prentice; Abrams, 1991. 828.Google Scholar
Joseph, Michael. “Vertigo: A Graphic Novel of the Great Depression—an Exhibition of the Original Woodblocks and Wood Engravings by Lynd Ward.” Introduction. Curated by Michael Joseph. Spec. Collections and U Archives, Rutgers U. 2003.Google Scholar
Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Vintage, 1986.Google Scholar
Katz, Harry. “A Brief History of American Cartooning.” Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress. New York: Abrams, 2006. 28–109.Google Scholar
Koch, Gertrude. “‘Against All Odds’; or, The Will to Survive: Moral Conclusions from Narrative Closure.” History and Memory 9.1 (1997): 393–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunow, Rüdiger. “‘Emotion in Tranquility?‘ Representing the Holocaust in Fiction.” Emotion in Postmodernism. Ed. Hoffmann, Gerhard and Hornung, Alfred. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1997. 247–70.Google Scholar
Kunzle, David. The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973. Vol. 1 of The History of the Comic Strip. 2 vols. 1973–90.Google Scholar
Kunzle, David. Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2007.Google Scholar
Kunzle, David. The Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. Vol. 2 of The History of the Comic Strip. 2 vols. 1973–90.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. History and Memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landsberg, Alison. “America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Empathy.” New German Critique 71 (1997): 63–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefèvre, Pascal. “The Importance of Being ‘Published’: A Comparative Study of Different Comics Formats.” Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Ed. Magnussen, Anne and Christiansen, Hans-Christian. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, U of Copenhagen, 2000. 91–106.Google Scholar
Levine, Michael G. “Necessary Stains: Spiegelman's Maus and the Bleeding of History.” American Imago 59.3 (2002): 317–38.Google Scholar
Liss, Andrea. Trespassing through Shadows: Memory, Photography, and the Holocaust. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Heidi. “New BISAC Category for Graphic Novels/Comics.” Publishers Weekly 17 Jan. 2003. 7 Dec. 2007 <http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA271814.html>.Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. Interview with Hillary Chute. Believer Mar. 2007:80–86.Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. “Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics.” Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of New Comics. Ed. Wiater, Stanley and Bissette, Stephen R. New York: Fine, 1993. 3–16.Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper, 1993.Google Scholar
McGlothlin, Erin. “No Time like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman's Maus.” Narrative 11.2 (2003): 177–98.Google Scholar
McGrath, Charles. “Not Funnies.” New York Times Magazine 11 July 2004: 24+.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy K. “Cartoons of the Self: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Murderer.” M/E/A/N/I/N/G 12 (1992): 43–54.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. “The Commitment to Form; or, Still Crazy after All These Years.” PMLA 118 (2003): 321–25.Google Scholar
Orvell, Miles. “Writing Posthistorically: Krazy Kat, Maus, and the Contemporary Fiction Cartoon.” American Literary History 4 (1992): 110–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Calvin. “D&Q Heads BISAC, Bookseller Efforts.” Publishers Weekly 23 Dec. 2002. 6 Dec. 2007 <http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA267400.html>.Google Scholar
Rosen, Alan. “The Language of Survival: English as Metaphor on Art Spiegelman's Maus.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 15 (1995): 249–62.Google Scholar
Rothberg, Michael. “‘We Were Talking Jewish’: Art Spiegelman's Maus as ‘Holocaust’ Production.” Contemporary Literature 35 (1994): 661–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabin, Roger. Adult Comics: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Sacco, Joe. Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001.Google Scholar
Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992–95. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2000.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. Photographs by Jean Mohr. New York: Pantheon, 1985.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. “Homage to Joe Sacco.” Introduction. Palestine. By Joe Sacco. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001. i–v.Google Scholar
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2002.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Ronald. “Deconstructive Comics.” Journal of Popular Culture 25.4 (1992): 153–61.Google Scholar
Smolderen, Thierry. “Why the Brownies Are Important.” Coconino World. 6 Dec. 2007 <http://www.Coconino-world.com/s_classics/pop_classic/brownies/brow_eng.htm>.Google Scholar
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. CD-ROM. New York: Voyager, 1994.Google Scholar
Spiegelman, Art. “Ephemera vs. the Apocalypse.” Indy Magazine Autumn 2005. 12 Dec. 2006 <http://64.23.98.142/indy/autumn_2004/spiegelman_ephemera/index.html>..>Google Scholar
Spiegelman, Art. Interview with Gary Groth. Comics Journal 180 (1995): 52–106.Google Scholar
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986.Google Scholar
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991.Google Scholar
Staub, Michael E. “The Shoah Goes On and On: Remembrance and Representation in Art Spiegelman's Maus.” MELUS 20.3 (1995): 33–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varnum, Robin, and Gibbons, Christina T., eds. The Language of Comics: Word and Image. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2001.Google Scholar
Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000.Google Scholar
Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954.Google Scholar
Doug, Wheeler, Beerbohm, Robert L., and Sa, Leonardo De. “Töpffer in America.” Comic Art 3 (2003): 28–47.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth.” Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution.” Ed. Friedlander, Saul. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. 37–53.Google Scholar
Willems, Philippe. “Form(ul)ation of a Novel Narrative Form: Nineteenth-Century Pedagogues and the Comics.” Word and Image 24 (2007): 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, James E. “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Afterimages of History.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 666–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar