Studying the everyday: comics
Proposed to be offered next in 1998
A Macdonald
8 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
Objectives Students completing this subject should have acquired improved competency in reading both popular French and academic prose in the area of bande dessinée criticism. They should be able to manage analytical techniques bearing on the construction of `point of view' and `narrative voice' in relation to both image and verbal systems, and be able to bring together knowledge of a broad discursive formation, awareness of critical views, and analysis of particular texts. In conjunction with the development of critical question-asking skills, students should be able to present sustained readings of both comic-album and critical texts.
Synopsis This subject will engage students in close reading of a number of bandes dessinées of album length. The cartoon form will be taken as one inviting careful attention to linguistic register choices, narrative structures, and the rhetoric of graphics, among other textual processes. The subject will seek to develop skills in the reading of these interacting systems. This will involve attention to written versions of oral French (slang and region-specific idioms), an introduction to semiotics of the visual, and an alertness to the discursive implications of textual devices.
Assessment Two essays (2000 words): 40% each
* Seminar presentation
(1000 words): 20%
* Third-year students will be expected to read more
extensively in primary and/or secondary literature and will write essays
requiring more analytical/theoretical discussion.
Prescribed texts
The following bandes dessinées (cartoon albums) will be studied:
Baru Le chemin de l'Amérique Albin Michel
Benoit T Berceuse électrique Casterman
Stassen Le bar du vieux Français 2 Dupuis
Selection of photocopied articles to be distributed
Prescribed viewing
Huston The Maltese Falcon (available in Main Library)
Recommended reading
Peeters Case, planche, récit Casterman
Recommended viewings
Cromwell Dead Reckoning (1947)
Hawks To Have and Have Not (1944)
Hawks The Big Sleep (1946)
Marin Nocturne (1946)
Wilder Double Indemnity (1944)
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