(In) between word and image : reading comics
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Rain Newcomb (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
- Advisor
- Marsha Baker
Abstract: In this thesis, I explore what it means to read a comic. Because comics combine words
and images, reading a comic involves discovering the various relationships between two forms of
language that create meaning. Fundamentally, comics are what Mikhail Bakhtin would call a
hybridized construction because they combine two languages. Thus, comics are helping language
to evolve.
Historically, the relationship between words and images has been misunderstood, which
has led to a misunderstanding of comics. Bakhtin, writing in defense of the novel (another
medium that was poorly-received at its inception and criticized for many of the same reasons
comic books are criticized), says novels require different things of their readers because of the
ways they use language. Similarly, comics use language in new ways and present particular
challenges to their readers. There are remarkable parallels between how Bakhtin says we read the
novel and how comics scholars such as Thierry Groensteen and Charles Hatfield suggest we read
comics.
Using Bakhtin’s philosophy of language to read two comics, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
and David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, reveals that comics create both visual and verbal
representations of Bakhtin’s ideas. In particular, comics find new ways to manifest heteroglossia, through the many ways they can visually represent the voices of many speakers, pure dialogue, language as ideology. Furthermore, hybrid constructions, dialogism, and centripetal/centrifugal
forces are an inherent part of comic art.
Reading comics is particularly complex because they are a discourse that intentionally
embraces hybrid texts with words and images. Bakhtin shows that hybridized constructions are
the primary way language evolves. As our culture becomes more and more accustomed to
reading images, comics can help us make the shift to what image/word theorist W. J. T. Mitchell
predicts is new paradigm that will transcend the word/image dichotomy.
(In) between word and image : reading comics
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Created on 4/1/2011
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2011
- Keywords
- comics, graphic novels
- Subjects
- Comic books, strips, etc. -- History and criticism