Graphic Literature: Novels, Memoirs and Poems

Catalog description

This is a course in graphic texts (novels, memoirs, and poems) as literature. The last several decades have seen a sea-change in the nature of the graphic text, from the stuff of pre-teen wish-fulfillment, featuring overblown physiques and one-dimensional characters, to edgy, experimental, psychologically complex literary texts that cater to adults more than to children. The roots of the graphic text, though, arguably go back to Medieval European depictions of the stages of the cross and Japanese picture scrolls. Depending on the professor, the course material will change. For example, it might explore the graphic poem from the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake through the surreal poems of Max Ernst, the calligrammes of Apollinaire and the Concrete poets, up to contemporary web-based poetry-art collaborations. It might explore issues of race, gender and sexuality in contemporary graphic memoirs. It might study the origin of the graphic novel in the silent novels (in many ways the equivalent of silent films) of the 30s and 40s and work our way up through to the best graphic fiction being produced today.