The Language of Comic Narratives
The Language of Comic Narratives

Author: Isabel Ermida

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-12-10

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 3110208334

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The book offers a comprehensive account of how humor works in short stories, by presenting a model of narrative comedy that is pragmatically as well as semantically, grammatically and stylistically informed. It is the first study to combine a sequential analysis of the comic short story with a hierarchical one, merging together horizontal and vertical narratological perspectives in a systematic way. The book covers the main areas of linguistic analysis and is deliberately interdisciplinary, using input from philosophy, sociology and psychology so as to touch upon the nature, motivations and functions of humor as a cognitive phenomenon in a social context. Crucially, The Language of Comic Narratives combines a scholarly approach with a careful explanation of key terms and concepts, making it accessible to researchers and students, as well as non-specialists. Moreover, it reviews a broad range of historical critical data by examining the source texts, and it provides many humorous examples, from jokes to extracts from comic narratives. Thus, it seeks to anchor theory in specific texts, and also to show that many linguistic mechanisms of humor are common to jokes and longer, literary comic narratives. The book tests the model of humorous narratives on a set of comic short stories by British and American writers, ranging from Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy Parker, through Graham Greene and Corey Ford, to David Lodge and Woody Allen. The validity of the model is confirmed through a subsequent discussion of apparent counter-examples.

Girls and Their Comics
Girls and Their Comics

Author: Jacqueline Danziger-Russell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0810883759

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In America, comics and comic books have often been associated with adolescent male fantasy--muscle-bound superheroes and scantily clad women. Nonetheless, comics have also been read and enjoyed by girls. While there have been many strong representations of women throughout their history, the comics of today have evolved and matured, becoming a potent medium in which to explore the female experience, particularly that of girlhood and adolescence. In Girls and Their Comics: Finding a Female Voice in Comic Book Narrative, Jacqueline Danziger-Russell contends that comics have a unique place in the representation of female characters. She discusses the overall history of the comic book, paying special attention to girls' comics, showing how such works relate to a female point of view. While examining the concept of visual literacy, Danziger-Russell asserts that comics are an excellent space in which the marginalized voices of girls may be expressed. This volume also includes a chapter on manga (Japanese comics), which explains the genesis of girls' comics in Japan and their popularity with girls in the United States. Including interviews with librarians, comic creators, and girls who read comics and manga, Girls and Their Comics is an important examination of the growing interest in comic books among young females and will appeal to a wide audience, including literary theorists, teachers, librarians, popular culture and women's studies scholars, and comic book historians.

The Language of Comics
The Language of Comics

Author: Mario Saraceni

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780415214223

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The Language of Comics provides a history of comics from the end of the nineteenth century to the present and explores the 'semiotics of comics'.

The Visual Language of Comics
The Visual Language of Comics

Author: Neil Cohn

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1441174516

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Drawings and sequential images are an integral part of human expression dating back at least as far as cave paintings, and in contemporary society appear most prominently in comics. Despite this fundamental part of human identity, little work has explored the comprehension and cognitive underpinnings of visual narratives-until now. This work presents a provocative theory: that drawings and sequential images are structured the same as language. Building on contemporary theories from linguistics and cognitive psychology, it argues that comics are written in a visual language of sequential images that combines with text. Like spoken and signed languages, visual narratives use a lexicon of systematic patterns stored in memory, strategies for combining these patterns into meaningful units, and a hierarchic grammar governing the combination of sequential images into coherent expressions. Filled with examples and illustrations, this book details each of these levels of structure, explains how cross-cultural differences arise in diverse visual languages of the world, and describes what the newest neuroscience research reveals about the brain's comprehension of visual narratives. From this emerges the foundation for a new line of research within the linguistic and cognitive sciences, raising intriguing questions about the connections between language and the diversity of humans' expressive behaviours in the mind and brain.

Comic Books as History
Comic Books as History

Author: Joseph Witek

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780878054060

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This first full-length scholarly study of comic books as a narrative form attempts to explain why comic books, traditionally considered to be juvenile trash literature, have in the 1980s been used by serious artists to tell realistic stories for adults

From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels
From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels

Author: Daniel Stein

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-04-24

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 3110427729

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This essay collection examines the theory and history of graphic narrative as one of the most interesting and versatile forms of storytelling in contemporary media culture. Its contributions test the applicability of narratological concepts to graphic narrative, examine aspects of graphic narrative beyond the ‘single work’, consider the development of particular narrative strategies within individual genres, and trace the forms and functions of graphic narrative across cultures. Analyzing a wide range of texts, genres, and narrative strategies from both theoretical and historical perspectives, the international group of scholars gathered here offers state-of-the-art research on graphic narrative in the context of an increasingly postclassical and transmedial narratology. This is the revised second edition of From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels, which was originally published in the Narratologia series.

Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist
Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist

Author: Will Eisner

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2008-08-17

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0393346838

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The final volume of Will Eisner’s celebrated instructional trilogy explores the critical principle of body grammar in comics storytelling. Designed and outlined by Will Eisner before his death in 2005, this posthumous masterwork, the third and final book in the Will Eisner Instructional Series, finally reveals the secrets of Eisner’s own techniques and theories of movement, body mechanics, facial expressions, and posture: the key components of graphic storytelling. From his earliest comics, including the celebrated Spirit, to his pioneering graphic novels, Eisner understood that the proper use of anatomy is crucial to effective storytelling. His control over the mechanical and intuitive skills necessary for its application set him apart among comics artists, and his principles of body grammar have proven invaluable to legions of students in overcoming what is perhaps the most challenging aspect of creating comics. Buttressed by dozens of illustrations, which display Eisner’s mastery of expression, both subtle and overt, Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative will benefit comics fans, students, and teachers and is destined to become the essential primer on the craft.

Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives
Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives

Author: C. Foss

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1137501111

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As there has yet to be any substantial scrutiny of the complex confluences a more sustained dialogue between disability studies and comics studies might suggest, Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives aims through its broad range of approaches and focus points to explore this exciting subject in productive and provocative ways.

Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives
Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives

Author: Sebastian Domsch

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-07-05

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13: 3110446960

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Whether one describes them as sequential art, graphic narratives or graphic novels, comics have become a vital part of contemporary culture. Their range of expression contains a tremendous variety of forms, genres and modes − from high to low, from serial entertainment for children to complex works of art. This has led to a growing interest in comics as a field of scholarly analysis, as comics studies has established itself as a major branch of criticism. This handbook combines a systematic survey of theories and concepts developed in the field alongside an overview of the most important contexts and themes and a wealth of close readings of seminal works and authors. It will prove to be an indispensable handbook for a large readership, ranging from researchers and instructors to students and anyone else with a general interest in this fascinating medium.