INTRODUCTION: GRAPHIC NARRATIVE

• Published in: Modern fiction studies 2006-12, Vol.52 (4), p.767-782
• Main Authors: Chute, Hillary, DeKoven, Marianne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cartoons; Comic books; Graphic novels; Graphics; Literary criticism; Narrative art; Narrative modes; Narratives; Satrapi, Marjane (1969- ); Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946); Visual arts; Written narratives
• ISSN: 0026-7724; 1080-658X; 1080-658X
• DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2007.0002

Graphic narrative does the work of narration at least in part through drawing-making the question of style legible-so it is a form that also always refuses a problematic transparency, through an explicit awareness of its own surfaces. Because of this foregrounding of the work of the hand, graphic narrative is an autographic form in which the mark of handwriting is an important part of the rich extra-semantic information a reader receives. [...]from a literary perspective-as regards critical works by professional academics-there is little rigorous critical apparatus for any genre of comics, with the notable exception of a significant body of essays on Maus, Spiegelman's two-volume work about his father's experience in Auschwitz and beyond that depicts Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. (A related publishing endeavor to which comics has been attached-and which has perhaps contributed to the erroneous view that it is a simple medium-is the series of explanatory books with such titles as Introducing Derrida, Introducing Feminism, and Introducing Hawking).13 Coughlan argues that Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli's graphic novel adaptation-which is heralded within the comics community as a sophisticated success, but has previously received little sustained attention outside of it, despite being recently reprinted in the US-responds to the experimental nature of Auster's postmodern detective novel not by mirroring its form, but rather with a narrative experimentalism that is unique to the form of comics, particularly in attention to reforming the standard grid of the comics page. [...]in an interview with Alison Bechdel, conducted by Hillary Chute, author Bechdel discusses the composition of her intricatelystructured graphic memoir.