Abstract
In this chapter, Halsall discusses the myriad benefits to teaching graphic novels as a unique genre of literature, arguing that the graphic novel format helps transform a novel into an artistic artifact, and thus appeals in part to the needs of our distinctly visual age. With this multimedia reading experience as a foundation, Halsall discusses her use of Frank Miller’s 300 to discuss the epic genre and Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in engaging with Victorian historical and literary conventions, and the ways in which these readings deepen students’ understanding of and engagement with both the graphic novel format and the conventions of the more traditionally “literary.”
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Notes
- 1.
Much criticism has been devoted to the definition of this rich new medium. It is a term that is hotly contested. Even so, most critics identify Will Eisner’s 1978 A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories as the first graphic novel, though ironically it was not a novel at all but rather a collection of four interlinked stories. Alan Moore has dismissed the term as nothing more than a marketing device. In describing “the vital yet often misunderstood genre of the ‘graphic novel’” (x), Charles Hatfield points to the sophistication and seriousness that the term “novel” accords to long-form comics. In turn, Stephen Tabachnick ironically points out that although graphic novels use the term “novel,” many of them are actually nonfictional works, like autobiographies, biographies, histories, reportage, and travelogues. In their excellent analysis of the graphic novel, Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey clarify that the graphic novel has “a complex and variegated nature of form” (8), generally “tries to foreground more individual styles” (9), and tries to “turn away from [the] conventions” (9) of comics in its radical reformation of the comics genre as a whole. Recently the literary world’s growing interest in comics and graphic novels legitimates both fields and absorbs them into the larger literary realm (Baetens and Frey 197), since, they note, “Literary adaptations have always been part of comics culture” (201). Baetens and Frey go on to argue that “a new space is being established by editors and publishers, where the frontiers between visual and literary culture are no longer present, and instead the two aspects conjoin to provide an attractive original offer to the public” (216). This exciting new medium undoubtedly “resists coherence” (xiii), as Charles Hatfield observes, and therein lies some of its power and possibility, both in and out of the university and college classroom.
- 2.
This ideal that illustrated narratives will encourage readers (and students) to turn to literary texts is one that has been present in the marketing of comics from the beginning. Many early comics were published to draw young readers into the classics. The Classics Illustrated series, for example, was an important genre of comics, serving as a bridge to the English canon . Its tagline from 1950 onwards read: “Now that you have read the Classics Illustrated edition, don’t miss the added enjoyment of reading the original, obtainable at your school or public library” (Baetens and Frey 39). Interestingly, issues of Classics Illustrated were released at the beginning of the new school year, and the Boy Scouts of America recommended their titles in their 1957 manual (ibid.). Comics thus aligned themselves early on with literature, both in an attempt to deepen literacy among youth and also to legitimize comics culture.
- 3.
My insight into visual decoding is influenced by the work of E. H. Gombrich, Perry Nodelman, David Lewis, Maria Nikolajeva, and Carole Scott.
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Halsall, A. (2018). “What Is the Use of a Book … Without Pictures or Conversations?”: Incorporating the Graphic Novel into the University Curriculum. In: Burger, A. (eds) Teaching Graphic Novels in the English Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63459-3_6
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