Comics Theory
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Comics Theory
Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studies or graphic narrative studies) is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop culture texts, scholars in fields such as semiotics, aesthetics, sociology, composition studies and cultural studies are now re-considering comics and graphic novels as complex texts deserving of serious scholarly study. Not to be confused with the technical aspects of comics creation, comics studies exists only with the creation of comics theory—which approaches comics critically as an art—and the writing of comics historiography (the study of the history of comics).Benoît Crucifix"Redrawing Comics into the Graphic Novel: Comics Historiography, Canonization, and Authors' Histories of the Medium" "Whither comics studies?" panel, International conference of the French Association for American Studies, Toulouse (France), May 24–27, ...
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Comics
a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. There is no consensus amongst theorists and historians on a definition of comics; some emphasize the combination of images and text, some sequentiality or other image relations, and others historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters. Cartooning and other forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; '' fumetti'' is a form that uses photographic images. Common forms include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comic albums, and ' have become increasingly common, while online webcomics have proliferated in the 21st century. The histo ...
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Will Eisner
William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series ''The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book ''A Contract with God''. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book '' Comics and Sequential Art'' (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. 1917–1936: Early life Family background Eisner's father, Shmuel "Samuel" Eisner, was born March 6, 1886, in Kolomyia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Ukraine), and was one of eleven children. He aspired to be an artist, and as a teenager painted murals for rich patrons and Catholic church ...
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Visual Rhetoric
Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience. Although visual rhetoric also involves typography and other texts, it concentrates mainly on the use of images or visual texts. Using images is central to visual rhetoric because these visuals help in either forming the case an image alone wants to convey, or arguing the point that a writer formulates, in the case of a Multimodality, multimodal text which combines image and written text, for example. Visual rhetoric has gained more notoriety as more recent scholarly work started exploring alternative media forms that include graphics, screen design, a ...
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Alain Rey
Alain Rey (; – )
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was a French , and radio personality. He was the editor-in-chief at French dictionary publisher . His wife,
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Rodolphe Töpffer
Rodolphe Töpffer ( , ; 31 January 1799 – 8 June 1846) was a Swiss teacher, author, painter, cartoonist, and caricaturist. He is best known for his illustrated books (''littérature en estampes'', "graphic literature"), which are possibly the earliest European comics. He is known as the father of comic strips and has been credited as the "first comics artist in history." Paris-educated, Töpffer worked as a schoolteacher at a boarding school, where he entertained students with his caricatures. In 1837, he published (published in the United States in 1842 as ''The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck''). Each page of the book had one to six captioned cartoon panels, much like modern comics. Töpffer published several more of these books, and wrote theoretical essays on the form. Biography Töpffer was born on 12 pluviôse of the seventh year of the French Republican calendar at ten hours after noon (« dix heures après midi »), that is on 31 January 1799, in Geneva, Léman ...
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Thierry Groensteen
Thierry Groensteen (; born 18 April 1957, Uccle, Brussels) is one of the leading French-speaking comics researchers and theorists, whose work has found influence beyond that field. Career In 1984, Groensteen became the editor-in-chief of the old fanzine ''Schtroumpf : Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée'', transforming it into one of the first publications that would lead to serious academic criticism of comics in France and beyond. He integrated the publishing company into discussions on art and culture. His work as the organizer of the famous Colloque de Cérisy, in 1987, titled "Bande dessinée, récit et modernité" ("Comics, narrative and modernity"), was also an important contribution. As the director of Angoulême's , during the early 1990s, he worked on many projects such as exhibitions and their catalogues as well as on monographs on several authors, or themes and collections presented by the Angoulême Museum. He was also the director of the first run of its official m ...
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Neil Cohn
Neil Cohn (; born 1980) is an American cognitive scientist and comics theorist. His research offers the first serious scientific study of the cognition of understanding comics, and uses an interdisciplinary approach combining aspects of theoretical and corpus linguistics with cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Cohn’s work argues that common cognitive capacities underlie the processing of various expressive domains, especially verbal and signed languages and what he calls “visual language”—the structure and cognition of drawings and visual narratives, particularly those found in comics. His 2020 book, ''Who Understands Comics?'' explored the proficiency required to understand visual narratives, and was nominated for a 2021 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. His theories on visual language provided the foundation for the creation of automatically generated news comics for the BBC. Cohn's research has also examined the comprehension and linguistic s ...
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Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the Rose'', a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as ''Foucault's Pendulum,'' his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes. Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine ''L'Espresso'' beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has conti ...
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Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism. Barthes is perhaps best known for his 1957 essay collection ''Mythologies'', which contained reflections on popular culture, and 1967 essay "The Death of the Author," which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Collège de France. Biography Early life Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. His father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed in a battle during ...
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Semiotician
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves Sign (semiotics), signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a Meaning (semiotics), meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: Visual system, visual, Hearing, auditory, Somatosensory system, tactile, Olfaction, olfactory, or taste, gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communicat ...
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Continental Philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe. A different use of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement. Continental philosophy includes German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche), hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, French feminism, psychoanalytic theory, and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as well as branches of Freudian, Hegelian and Western Marxist views. The term ''continental philosophy'' lacks cle ...
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