Windows of Cognition : Contemporary French Comics and the Cultural Middlebrow
This chapter deliberates the merits of whether French-language comics may be construed as a salient example of a new cultural middlebrow. It argues that the comics artist introduces new ways of seeing shared worlds, stressing the referential aspects typical of the literary middlebrow, but not of the...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Dalhousie University
2017-11-01
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| Series: | Belphégor |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor/1005 |
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| Summary: | This chapter deliberates the merits of whether French-language comics may be construed as a salient example of a new cultural middlebrow. It argues that the comics artist introduces new ways of seeing shared worlds, stressing the referential aspects typical of the literary middlebrow, but not of the high-brow, which is characterised by a high degree of self-consciousness. Moreover, where these special cognitive windows open out onto social and political realities that trouble a middlebrow audience, they can offer alternative, sometimes challenging perspectives. These claims are tested through analyses of Marjane Satrapi’s contemporary classic Persepolis and Riad Sattouf’s on-going saga L’Arabe du futur. The chapter concludes with a brief digression into the colourful, metaphysical universe of Joann Sfar’s Le Chat du rabbin. |
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| ISSN: | 1499-7185 |