1st Edition
Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture Emblems and Comic Strips
By Laurance Grove
Copyright 2005
256 Pages
by
Routledge
256 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This study compares text/image interaction as manifested in emblem books (and related forms) and the modern bande dessinée, or French-language comic strip. It moves beyond the issue of defining the emblematic genre to examine the ways in which emblems - and their modern counterparts - interact with the surrounding culture, and what they disclose about that culture. Drawing largely on primary... Read more
Contents: Foreword; Introduction: Text/image forms; The emblem; The bande dessinée; Previous critical approaches. Theoretics: 'Nemo nescit picturam esse poëma tacens ...'; The ninth art of France. Production: Moveable woodcuts; Mickey, or Le Journal de Mickey?. Thematics: Capricious cupids; Where have all the Nazis gone?. Reception: From moveable mosaic...; ...To moving images. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Laurence Grove is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, UK, having previously studied and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The Newberry Library and Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.
'By taking a fresh perspective on bande dessinée history, Grove casts new light on the "father of comics" Rodolphe Töpffer, and asks uncomfortable questions about the French industry in the 1940s and 50s.' Roger Sabin, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK '... the author's refreshingly keen interest in text/image genres is evident throughout... he has read widely in the emblematic corpus of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His knowledge of French comics seem equally broad... ' Renaissance Quarterly ’One of the principal strengths of Laurence Grove's Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture is its author's refusal to accept unquestioningly any received ideas regarding the history of the comic... This is a highly readable study by an author who has confident mastery of the diverse, even heterogeneous range of material under consideration. In relation to the BD itself, Grove moves far beyond an often excessively restricted canon to give a clear sense of the genre's historical texture. At the same time, he focuses on under-explored key titles... The argument is consistently well illustrated...’ Modern Language Review
