City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Reading bande dessinee, critical approaches to French-language comic strip, Ann Miller

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-264) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Reading bande dessinee

electronic resource

bibliography

Ann Miller

critical approaches to French-language comic strip

Provides an introduction to the medium of bande dessinee and critical analysis with focus on contemporary examples of the art form, historical context, key artists, and themes such as gender, autobiography and postcolonial culture. This book demonstrates why bande dessinee is considered to be a visual narrative art form., Bande dessine, 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 Dessine, 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 dessine 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 dessine in its relationship to subjectivity in the body. Miller here illuminates such disparate concepts as Astrix 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 Dessine 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 dessine, 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 dessine 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 dessine to the theoretical reflections on the medium, the sociological analysis and the problematic of the autobiographical self in graphic literature."-Harry Morgan

specialized