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Vol. 04 No. 1, November 2004

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10222/31206

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Presentation
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004-11) Frigerio, Vittorio
  • ItemOpen Access
    Contents - Belphégor Vol 4 No 1
    (2004-11) Frigerio, Vittorio
  • ItemOpen Access
    « Ceci n'est pas un cigare » : Les Cigares du pharaon ou Le récit en trompe-l'oeil
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004-12) Thibault, Franck
  • ItemOpen Access
    COMICA: Confessions & Convictions, June 5th - June 13th 2004.
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004-12) Le Duc, Dominique
  • ItemOpen Access
    PONSON DU TERRAIL A L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE (billet)
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004-12) Grivel, Charles
  • ItemOpen Access
    Festival dell'India - 3° edizione, Forum di Assago (Milano), 25-28 marzo 2004
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004-12) D'Angelo, Corinne; Belli, Livio
  • ItemOpen Access
    Bande dessinée et trifonctionnalité
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Corbellari, Alain
    The "théorie trifonctionnelle" of Georges Dumézil identified the foundations of the structures of groups of characters in ancient Indo-European literature. This article starts from an intuition by Joël Grisward, one of Dumézil's followers, who applied this theory to French medieval literature, and attempts to determine whether it can tell us anything about the "tri-functional" system and the groups of comics heroes. It concludes that this system does not appear to be a constant of the human spirit, and that this type of structure is very rare in illustrated literature, with the exception of a very few cases.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Persepolis et les révolutions de Marjane Satrapi
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Carrier, Melanie
    This article examines some of the autorepresentational strategies in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. The first section deals with the generic aspect of the tale and the institutional and cultural position of its autobiographical subject. Then, an analysis of the narrative voices and of some segments of the narration leads to the identification of the tension between the narrating subject and the subject of the narration. Finally, a discussion of the art shows the importance of the reader's point of view in the construction of the story's meaning.
  • ItemOpen Access
    La bande dessinée historique : une source possible pour l'historien. L'exemple de la collection Vécu (1985-2002)
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Rosemberg, Julien
    The Glénat Editions were created in 1969 and have since become one of the greatest publishers of bandes dessinées in France. In the early 80s this publisher took advantage of a favourable context to create a series of historical comics, following the suggestion of Henri Filippini – a connoisseur of franco-belgian b.d. and one of France's foremost collectors in the field. By December 2000, Vécu had published 332 albums. The series offers adventures with an historical background in varied contexts. However, all authors belong to their own time, and the weltanschauung of these stories often shows traces of an ideology contemporary to their writing. More than teaching History, the authors provide information on the view they have of the 80s and 90s. It would be overly simplistic to reduce their different visions in a few artificially distinct categories, but it is still evident that certain themes re-occur over the whole series. They tend to embody a sort of “libertarian” tendency, although somewhat confused and without providing explicit political directions. On the one hand, the realistic representation of a given historical period creates a limit to the encroachment of ideology. On the other, contemporary implicit ideologies influence the representation of History. It would be a mistake to imagine that these world-views have a limited impact. On average, this series sells more than one million albums a year, mostly in France. his article aims to contribute to an analysis of historical writing through the study of a medium that has been largely ignored by historians in spite of its wide readership, and to rehabilitate comics as a valid source of information for historical research.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Transgressive Bodies in the Work of Julie Doucet, Fabrice Neaud and Jean-Christophe Menu: Towards a Theory of the 'AutobioBD'
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Miller, Ann; Pratt, Murray
    This paper draws on the autobiographical work of bande dessinée artists Fabrice Neaud, Julie Doucet and Jean-Christophe Menu with the aim of investigating the potential of the medium to disturb the normative visual order of heterocentricity and phallocracy. The paper discusses Neaud's exploration of the isolations, separations and segregations which produce and constrict the orderings and disorderings of a gayed male body in social space(s), together with his theorisation of the social politics of self and other. It considers in particular the trope of the insult, drawing on Didier Eribon's work on the insult as constitutive of gay identity. The work of the Québecoise artist Julie Doucet is discussed in relation to her refusal of the disembodied speaking voice that has often characterized male autobiographies, and her occupation of the terrain which Kristeva has called the 'abject', through her exuberant portrayal of bodily fluids. In contrast, Jean-Christophe Menu seems to resist narrative embodiment, making copious use of voiceover and distancing the body of his diegetic self from the rationality of the narrative 'I' through his disguise as a cartoon character, while the body of his wife is repeatedly represented. It is argued, however, that an apparently phallocratic occupation of socio-sexual terrain is ultimately called into question in Menu's work. The article concludes that bande dessinée has complex resources for contesting the construction of masculinity and femininity and for giving form to the autobiographical 'I'.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Le Portrait d'Edmond Baudoin: Réflexions sur l'efficacité d'une oeuvre à  saisir la vie
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Martin, Annabelle
  • ItemOpen Access
    Imperialism in Asterix
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Clark, Andrew
    The Asterix books, having been written over a long period of time, have reflected a number of contemporary concerns which were relevant at the time of composition - some of which are still relevant today. One of these themes is the question of imperialism and its implications for the French. In this article I have attempted to provide a guide to this theme, and explore the ways in which Goscinny and Uderzo use Roman history in the Asterix books in order to address the issue of imperialism.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Gotlib's Progress
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Screech, Matthew
    This article traces the evolution of the French bande dessinée artist Marcel Gotlib (b. 1934). It draws upon strips from throughout his career, as well as upon an interview he gave me. As we shall see, Gotlib humorously charts the process of growing up in a French-speaking country; in so doing, he pokes fun at everything that shaped his educational background and his cultural identity as a Frenchman. Gotlib repeatedly refers to a wide range of Francophone sources: historical figures, nursery rhymes, popular songs, plays, poems, novels, films, BDs and so on. Those repeated references foster a feeling of complicity between the artist and his French-speaking public: to appreciate Gotlib's jokes fully, readers must be able to recognise the French history and culture he sends up. The decisive influence of Francophone culture and history over Gotlib's humour is particularly clear when we compare him to American humorists of his generation: Mad magazine and the Underground.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Autobiography in Early Bande dessinée
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Grove, Laurence
    Canonical literary autobiographies such as those of Rousseau, Gide or Sartre, provide an individualised and ambiguous introspective that points to intricate universal traits. Nothing could seem further from the stock third-person buffooneries that are often seen as the hallmark of the early bande dessinée: M. Pencil, Bécassine, Mickey, Pif le Chien… This paper will examine the possibility of a lesser-known counter-trend in the works that saw the development of the BD from the nineteenth century to the immediate post-war period. We will consider early BD autobiography on three levels: 'true' (or pseudo-true) autobiography in which the author tells of his own experiences; projected autobiography whereby a first-person narrative creates the effect of autobiography; finally, self-referential creations in which the BD as a form can be seen as manufacturing its own autobiography. The overall aim of the paper is to put such findings in the context of the specificity of the BD's development and ask what they tell us (including what a lack of findings might tell us) about the intrinsic nature of this text/image form.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Translation's Visibility: David B.'s L'Ascension du Haut Mal in Italy
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Rota, Valerio
    Comics are published all over the world in different formats, which peculiarly characterize each national production. Translating a comic, then, means to cope with cultural aspects: how can a French album, that is a giant-sized hardcover book in full colour, be translated and published in Italy, where readers are used to the pocket-sized, black-and-white bonelliani? Altering the size of pages, the colours, the disposition of panels in a comic story in order to adapt it to a different format, means to destroy all those equilibriums which its original author set in order to achieve particular effects. Therefore, in translating a comic the modification of formats is incompatible with the respect for the original work. This seems to confirm Antoine Berman's theories about “l'épreuve de l'étranger”: a translated comic cannot hide its foreign origin. This contribution analyses the Italian edition of David B.'s L'Ascension du Haut Mal, spotlighting its characteristics and weak points.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Keeping an Eye on Things: Attention, Tracking and Coherence-Building
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Bridgeman, Teresa
    Much has been written about the way in which narrative sequences operate in BD, not least by Eisner, and McCloud. Such approaches, despite their subtleties, presuppose a model of narrative in which actions or events are foregrounded as 'figures' against a background setting, enabling the reader to create a hierarchy of elements in the visual and written fields of the BD. In this model, the reader is then in a position to track principle features of the action, while having the freedom to linger over elements of the background. This paper considers the possibility that the figure/ground distinction, like that between narrative and description, while it is a useful normative principle which the reader can bring to his or her processing of the text, requires re-examination in light of certain BD texts. It explores how the reader tracks and identifies meaningful sequences, looking in particular at Trondheim and Duffour's Gare Centrale (1994) and Schelle's La Théorie du chaos (2001).
  • ItemOpen Access
    Autobiographie et bandes dessinées : Problèmes, enjeux, exemples
    (Dalhousie University. Electronic Text Centre, 2004) Baetens, Jan
    This reflection on the autobiographical dimension of contemporary "bande dessinée" will examine a certain number of general questions, including: Does the present tendency to autobiography in "bande dessinée" constitute an advantage for the medium? Should we consider that authenticity increases artistic value? Or rather (since my answer will not be entirely positive) is it in the interest of "bande dessinée" to adopt autobiography, as other media have done? Does the autobiographical dimension remain within the field of the so-called "autobiographical pact" (see Philippe Lejeune) or is it possible to think of other ways and means? If yes (since I tend to think that the answer will be rather positive), which? What should we think of the contribution of so-called "médiagénie", i.e. all questions relating to the notion of a specificity belonging to a given media? (Here, I will attempt to show that "bande dessinée" does not incorporate autobiography any which way, but that it « modifies » it somehow.) ow is autobiographical expression compatible with the requirements of writing as a system made up of rules, if not made up of obligations? The examples are drawn from contemporary Franco-Belgian production.