Challenges to Realism in The African Graphic Novel

This paper deals primarily with issues of cultural representation for Nigerian heritage children in the United Kingdom, inevitably touching on the wider issue of representation for Afro-British children in graphic novels. The idea for this essay came from reading the paper by Rudine Sims-Bishop (2012) “Reflections on the development of African-American children’s Literature” which led me on to her earlier work “Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Doors” ( Bishop,1990). Reading Bishop’s work prompted a thought process based on my own love for graphic novels of all types.

Libri et Liberi, 2018

Originally written in Spanish by comics author Santiago García, On the Graphic Novel is a scholarly and compendious study of the graphic novel; the presentation of this volume for an English-speaking readership fully justifies the translator Bruce Campbell's endeavours. García's study came out in 2010, at a time when the graphic novel had become entrenched in the popular imaginary as an art form and was often perceived as antithetical to the lowbrow medium of comics. Suspending value judgements, García merely classifies graphic novels as "another, different formulation for comics" (ix). This may lead comics studies scholars to expect an updating of the critical genealogy established in Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art (1985) and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993). García himself appears to offer a precedent for such an expectation. He notes that at the time of his writing, the cultural legitimacy granted to the graphic novel had also somehow influenced the steadily growing presence of comics in high culture, including the literary and artistic worlds-both in traditional centres of comics production, such as the United States and France, as well as in newer sites, including countries such as Spain. Currently, the elevation of comics to a status of cultural legitimacy has implied that the medium has been frequently viewed as a pedagogical tool: reluctant readers are encouraged to appreciate difficult texts such as Shakespeare's plays through comics adaptations, for example. But for García, attempts to rescue comics from cultural damnation along these lines do injustice to the peculiar excellences of this multimodal medium. For García, comics are more than a mere "hybrid of word and image" (182) whose forte lies in the rich experience offered to the reader. Concurrently, he notes that the term graphic novel is seen by many comics artists as nothing more than a linguistic attempt to dignify the medium. García, however, is not one to opine, in the spirit of Shakespeare's Juliet, that the term graphic novel is nothing but a mere name. Nevertheless, his intention is not to offer an authoritative "definition" (ix), earmarking certain formal features that might pitch the graphic novel against other varieties of comics. For him, such theorisation would be premature, given that the medium is still in a nascent state and as such "has no a priori" (x) stylistic features. Hence, instead of dwelling on the ontological issues of what comics or graphic novels are per se, García proposes to assess empirically what socio-cultural "functions" (x) comics may have performed over time, and where the graphic novel may be situated in this respect. Chalking out comics "inside a functionalist history" (x) therefore, García apprehends the comic primarily as an art form. However, he also pays attention to the economic history of the medium, taking in, for instance, the respective publishers of comics, their distribution networks, the popularisation of cheap comic books through newsstands, the eventual decline of sales through newsstands and the replacement of sales through other venues such as specialist bookshops, which worked in tandem with the rising culture of comics collectors who frequented comics festivals. Undertaking to "re-write the history of 323-347

Dialogues between Media

Comic art and graphic narrative constitute a varied and multifaceted chapter in the cultural history of the contemporary age. When comics gained a foothold on the mass-media scene, they appeared as an object that was new, and indefinable. As is often the case when facing a novelty, there was a reactionary response. In fact, the slippery nature of the emerging medium resulted in widespread rejection by the establishment and a variety of negative connotations. Labelled for much of the twentieth century as a genre intended for children, or as second-rate cultural products, or even as morally harmful, in recent times, comics have begun to be re-evaluated by academics, particularly in the West. Even though today there remains a tendency to emphasize the literary value of individual works rather than their nature as sequential art, many negative connotations of the past have given way to an increasing need to understand how the comics medium works and what makes graphic narration so peculiar.

ABSTRACT This article aims to discuss some points on literary aesthetics and interpretation with a focus on African literature and within the framework of the theory of stylistic criticism. The aesthetic dimension distinguishes African literature as a specific artistic creation in the comity of global culture. Literature like any work of art is prone to different interpretations and reactions as the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden has pointed out. But the criticism and interpretation of African literature must be carried out within the context of Africa’s peculiar tradition and values. In the attempt to discover the artistic status of a work, the interpretations must decipher the extraordinary in the formal aesthetic features of the work. The way a writer has made an ordinary story to look special beyond what is familiar gives the work its aesthetic value. Artful African work of fiction seeks to present the meaning of African social and cultural issues in a malleable poetic and narrative language, richly symbolic, that is imaginatively persuasive with a power to capture attention and emotionally sanctify the reader. Key words: African literature, aesthetics, criticism, judgment, appreciation. ABSTRAIT Cet article a l'intention de discuter un certain nombre de points sur l'esthétique et l’interprétation littéraires en se concentrant sur la littérature africaine dans le cadre de la théorie de la critique stylistique. La dimension esthétique distingue la littérature africaine comme une création artistique spécifique dans le comité de culture globale. La littérature comme n'importe quelle œuvre d'art est encline à de différentes interprétations et aux réactions, comme Roman Ingarden, le phénoménologiste a montré. Mais la critique et l'interprétation de la littérature africaine doivent être réalisées dans le contexte de la tradition particulière de l'Afrique et de ses valeurs. Dans la tentative de découvrir le statut artistique d'un travail, les interprétations doivent déchiffrer l'extraordinaire dans les traits esthétiques formels du travail. La façon dans laquelle un auteur a transformé une histoire banale en un texte particulier au-delà de ce qui est familier donne au travail sa valeur esthétique. La création artistique d’une œuvre de fiction africaine cherche à présenter le sens des problèmes sociaux et culturels africains dans un langage poétique et narratif malléable, richement symbolique, qui est imaginativement persuasif, capable de capturer l'attention et sanctifier le lecteur avec émotion.

Review of Arts and Humanities, 2015

This essay critically analyzes the distinct meanings and aesthetics of three outspoken political cartoons that use haunting images and captions to picture contemporary sub-Saharan African issues-political corruption, social and economic privations, and conflicts. The selected cartoons-Jonathan Shapiro's "Elections in Zimbabwe" (2005), Popa Mutumula's "Conflicts and Corruption" (2004), and Tayo Fatunla's "Still Waiting for a Better Nigeria" (2005)-criticize corrupt social conditions so uniquely that their undeniable rhetorical power overshadows concerns about aesthetics. Drawing upon a wide range of theoretical works, the paper argues that cartooning can be used as a springboard for criticism, mediation, and social change in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation, 2018

Comics are a global phenomenon of popular culture and seem to be ubiquitous in many contexts and media. They can be found in newspapers, bookstores, on the web as well as in US Army brochures; companies are selling their products with comics as manuals, the film industry adapts them to the screen, and comics are even used for opera performances, such as the production of Tosca at the Berlin State Opera in 2014, where a projection screen was used to illustrate the plot in the form of a graphic novel. Scott McCloud accurately summarizes the omnipresence of the comic in an interview: "Comics are being used for more things, read by more people, and have more of an essential importance to the culture, relevance to the culture, and effect on the culture than they ever had" (Irving 2010). Translation plays a central part in the global spread of this medium. First, comics were imported into cultural areas that did not have their own comic book traditions. Moreover, translations influenced the national production of comics in countries that imported them, both in content and form. Due to their global presence, comics thus represent a transcultural phenomenon, which, however, has long been ignored by translation studies or which has been investigated only to a limited extent. This article aims to provide a holistic view from the perspective of translation studies. It begins by offering a brief historical summary of its development and discusses possible definitions, through which we can establish its essential translation-relevant characteristics. This is followed by a discussion of the central questions and issues based on research in the field of comic translation and an outline of future developments. The development of comics and the problem of their definition Historical perspectives The USA is regarded as the country where comics originated. The success story of this art form began with the appearance of the first comic strip in the New York World in 1895initially still in the form of a single image, but from 1896 consisting of several panels. Comic strips such as George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in 15 Comics, the graphic novel and fan fiction Klaus Kaindl 'inferior', while others regard the graphic novel as an alternative medium to discuss serious topics in a larger narrative context. Frequently, they are also adaptations of literary works, an example being Stéphane Heuet's comics of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (cf. Carrier 2014). Web-based technologies have given new impetus to the production and translation of comics. Digitisation opened up new possibilities for designing panels and adding hyperlinks to them, which lead to new URLs, thus enabling a multi-layered reading experience (cf. Carter 2011). The new technologies also brought new possibilities for the translation process. Beside traditional graphic programs such as Adobe's Photoshop, there is also specific software such as the Comic Translation Tool to facilitate the tasks of the comic translator. For comic translation, blogs, fan sites and scanlation also present new challenges and possibilities, as will be discussed in more detail later. Authors exchange ideas with their fans on platforms such as tapastic.com and theduckwebcomics.com, and questions about translation are also discussed in separate threads. Even though the USA is regarded as the country of origin of the comic, other countries also developed their own comic traditions with their own predecessors and visual art traditions. This becomes evident when we look at the various names for comics in different cultures: French bandes dessinées, Italian fotoromanzi, Chinese manuha, Indian chitrakatha or Japanese manga are all different genres with specific conventions. 1 Precisely because the translation of comics is not merely a linguistic transfer, but also a visual one, it is important to be familiar with the culture-specific traditions and conventions, or as Evans put it: "studying comics in relation to translation also needs a good understanding of the global comics tradition(s)" (Evans 2017, 325). Japanese mangas represent a key area that is particularly relevant to translation. According to Zanettin (2008a: 4) the manga business is fifty times larger than the comic business in the USA. Similarly, mangas are a good example of the cross-cultural dimensions of comics, which originated from their own tradition of printed visual arts, and are also influenced by foreign genres. Mangas are ultimately the hybridisation of Japanese visual traditions, which go back far into the past, through Korean and Chinese influences as well as Western, particularly American comics after the Second World War (cf. Johnson-Woods 2010). 2 Mangas Comics, the graphic novel and fan fiction

Course Description This section of English 177: Literature and Popular Culture, The Graphic Novel was designed to teach students to " make compelling arguments about and in various media " and to produce a " professional-like final product that represents their work to the world at large. " While twice weekly lectures by Professor Robin Valenza explored the development of the graphic novel as a genre, my section meetings focused on multimodal composition, helping students hone analytical skills and guiding them to create multimodal texts. After analyzing comics as multimodal texts, students worked in teams to interview members of the comics community—cartoonists, librarians, comics store owners, researchers, etc.—and craft documentary videos. The course mobilized the analytic potential of the comics form and its multimodal nature to encourage production of authentic texts that students viewed as having value beyond the classroom. Published in Composition Studies, Special Issue on Comics and Multimodal Composition 43.1 (2015)

The comic-book genre has gone through several important changes along the twentieth century in the Anglo-Saxon world. This verbal-iconical genre seems to have been able to overcome the Manichean vision of the comic-book as something childish, and thus find a new space for the maturation of its own devices. As the latest outgrowth of the comic-book expansion, the graphic novel has become the corner stone whereby a link is established between the pure narrative form of the novel and the visual quality of the verbal-iconical genres. The daring and yet successful combination of these different trends has contributed to elevating the graphic novel to the status of proper art form. Hence, the aim of this essay is to offer a modest and serious proposal for the analysis of the four verbal-iconical genres directly related to the comic-book, to wit: the illustrated novel, the comic strip, the comic-book, and, finally, the graphic novel. The latter has given a new breath to the narrative forms of the verbal-iconical genres, especially to the comic-book, allowing for an experimentalism inside this trend, producing a new independent hybrid genre, and making possible a reorientation of narrative techniques concerning the time factor –chronotope– in the comic-book genre towards a more complex and coherent structure.

Scan, 2017

Revered Japanese mangaka (comics artist), Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) claimed, ‘My experience convinces me that comics, regardless of what language they are printed in, are an important form of expression that crosses all national and cultural boundaries …’ (cited in Schodt, 1983). In recent times, readers in the Western world have shown an increasing interest in Japanese comics (manga) as well as in a variety of indigenous, multicultural and transcultural comics and graphic novels. Publications of this type offer a forum for voices rarely heard in conventional Western children’s literature.

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature Revue Canadienne De Litterature Comparee, 2011

Mousaion, 2007

In this article, an attempt is made to present a critical overview of the creative work of selected illustrators of South African children's books that have been published locally since 1950. The essence of the article lies in the critical discussion of the artistic styles and techniques, as well as mediums, used by illustrators to execute the art works. The analysis of the illustrations has been undertaken according to generally recognised art styles and conventions: realism (including romantic realism and super-realism), naivete Â, caricaturisation, as well as stylising with expressive elements and decorative African elements. Although any critique of an artist's work remains a subjective issue, care has been taken to interview selected artists where there was doubt concerning the style intended. In all instances, a selection of publications illustrated by the mentioned illustrators is presented, with titles in English or Afrikaans, depending on the language of the original publication, although, in some cases, only one of the two was available. The article concludes with some comments on general and specific themes found in South African children's books as genre, such as multiculturalism and related social issues, Africa's wildlife, unique geographical spaces and indigenous folk tales.

Lecture Series: The History of Western Comics, 2023

Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, May 16, 2023. - Part 6 of a lecture series on the history of Western Comics. - This section deals with the advent of the graphic novel, a segment of the Comics market that has continually gained in importance in the Western Comics market since the 1970s. The term was first coined by Comic fanzine author Richard Kyle and then first gained traction in the American Comics scene; we will look at a preliminary definition of the term by American critic Isaac Cates. We will then look at a number of prominent examples from North America and Europe “A Contract with God”, the sophisticated book that popularized the term; “Maus”, which was the first Comic to win America’s most prestigious literary award; “Persepolis”, the first-hand account of a woman growing up under a repressive Iranian government; “Fun Home”, a Lesbian artist’s exploration of her relationship with her gay father; and two adaptations of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s seminal German drama “Faust”. After going over these examples, we will eventually return to our definition of what a graphic novel is and check its validity. Note: For copyright reasons, this text does not provide illustrations. Instead, links to online sources are provided.

2010

To say that graphic novels have attracted attention from educators is by now axiomatic. Professional journals, like this one, routinely feature articles that extol their virtue as a pedagogical tool. Books attest to the creative ways teachers are using them to scaffold students as readers and writers. Sessions devoted to graphic novels at the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual convention are invariably well attended and seem to proliferate in number from one year to the next. By all accounts, it would seem that educators have embraced a form of text whose older brother, the comic book, was scorned by teachers in the not-so-distant past. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. When Melanie Hundley, on behalf of the editors of The ALAN Review, invited me to contribute a column on graphic novels for an issue of the journal devoted to the influence of film, new media, digital technology, and the image on young adult literature, I was only too happy to oblige because it aff...