by Nicoletta Mandolini, Alessia Mangiavillano, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and Eva Van de Wiele
From Monday 12 July to Thursday 15 July, the third edition of the AIPI (Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano) Summer School took place in Ghent. For the first time, the Summer School was dedicated to the study of comics. The edition was sponsored by AIPI; the Italian Cultural Institute of Brussels; the Dante Alighieri Society of Ghent; and the research groups COMICS and SnIF.
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Tags: A Contract with God, adaptation, Alberto Giolotti, Alexander Calder, authorship, autofiction, Belgium, City of Glass, collages, comics, David Mazzucchelli, discontinuity, Enki Bilal, film, Finnegans Wake, fumetti, Gene Roddenberry, Gianni Colombo, graphic journalism, Graphic Novels, Henry Jenkins, imagination, Italy, James Joyce, Kafka, Kobane Calling, La Guerre des tranchées, Le Château, Le Voyage, Lev Manovich, literature, Lovecraft, Marvel, mass media, merchandising, metafiction, Mickey Mouse, Mobile sur deux plans, Olivier Deprez, Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, political engagement, radio, Reinhard Kleist, representation of realities, Robert Crumb, Roland Barthes, SnIF, social commentary, stagnation, Star Trek, Strutturazione fluida, subjectivity, Summer Schools, television, Tezuka Osamu, transmediality, transtextual narratives, Trilogie Nikopol, Umberto Eco, Will Eisner, Zerocalcare
The Paratextual Apparatus of Patrimonialisation – Part 2/3[1]
by Jean-Matthieu Méon
Woodcut novels form a genre of graphic narratives that emerged in Europe at the end of the 1910s with the works of the Belgian Frans Masereel. It was later explored and expanded by several European and Northern American artists, among whom the American Lynd Ward was one of the most influential (Beronä). If the genre waned in the 1950s, its influence has been claimed by diverse artists, especially in the comics field. In recent years, key works of the genre were reprinted in France and they are considered important elements of comics’ heritage.
The three parts of this article analyse this current comics valorisation of decades-old woodcut novels. The theoretical model of patrimonialisation (Davallon) helps to shed light on this process, which relies on a specific relationship with the past, made of both rediscovery and reinvention (part I). The editorial paratext of the current reprints plays here a central role. It’s a means to equate “woodcut novels” and “graphic novels” and to bring together distinct fields of artistic creations (part II). The symbolic stakes of this patrimonialising process are important: for comics and for their publishers, it’s part of a quest for legitimacy and for an artistic autonomy that Masereel and Ward could embody (part III).
The patrimonialisation of woodcut novels as comics heritage is based on a double movement: a temporal shift—from the present to the past—and a contextual one—from one field of cultural production (comics) to another (fine arts) [see part I]. The first operator of this patrimonialising process is the reprints of the woodcut works. Reprinting these woodcut novels, and distributing them in bookshops and comic shops, is a first bridging of the temporal and sectoral gaps but the paratext (Genette) of these reprints is also an essential aspect of this process. The paratext helps establish the double continuity between past woodcut novels and contemporary comics, creating a double “suture” (Davallon 114), between periods and between fields. As we’ll see, it also makes the suture seamless, thus naturalizing the result of the process.
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Tags: 25 images, 25 images de la passion d’un homme, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, artistic autonomy, Éclaireur, Éditions du Ravin Bleu, Bart Beaty, Belgium, Blexbolex, Charles Berberian, circular circulation, comics history, Davallon, David Beronä, Eric Drooker, Félix Vallotton, fine arts, France, Frans Masereel, George Walker, graphic novel, Henry Levet, heritage, historical discourse, historiographical paratexts, Idée, indistinction, Joe Pinelli, José Guadalupe Posada, Le Soleil, legitimacy, Les Arts dessinés, Lola Lafon, Loustal, Lynd Ward, Martin de Halleux, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, paratext, patrimonialisation, Robert Crumb, Samuel Dégardin, satire, Stefan Zweig, Tardi, temporal suture, Thomas Ott, USA, Will Eisner, woodcut novel, wordless comics, Youssef Daoudi
Comics Forum 
AIPI Summer School 2021 Ricerca a fumetti (Researching comics: genres, form(s), variations) 1/2
by Nicoletta Mandolini, Alessia Mangiavillano, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and Eva Van de Wiele
From Monday 12 July to Thursday 15 July, the third edition of the AIPI (Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano) Summer School took place in Ghent. For the first time, the Summer School was dedicated to the study of comics. The edition was sponsored by AIPI; the Italian Cultural Institute of Brussels; the Dante Alighieri Society of Ghent; and the research groups COMICS and SnIF.
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Posted by Annick Pellegrin on 2021/09/15 in Conference reports
Tags: A Contract with God, adaptation, Alberto Giolotti, Alexander Calder, authorship, autofiction, Belgium, City of Glass, collages, comics, David Mazzucchelli, discontinuity, Enki Bilal, film, Finnegans Wake, fumetti, Gene Roddenberry, Gianni Colombo, graphic journalism, Graphic Novels, Henry Jenkins, imagination, Italy, James Joyce, Kafka, Kobane Calling, La Guerre des tranchées, Le Château, Le Voyage, Lev Manovich, literature, Lovecraft, Marvel, mass media, merchandising, metafiction, Mickey Mouse, Mobile sur deux plans, Olivier Deprez, Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, political engagement, radio, Reinhard Kleist, representation of realities, Robert Crumb, Roland Barthes, SnIF, social commentary, stagnation, Star Trek, Strutturazione fluida, subjectivity, Summer Schools, television, Tezuka Osamu, transmediality, transtextual narratives, Trilogie Nikopol, Umberto Eco, Will Eisner, Zerocalcare