Keywords
comics studies, transmedial narratology, personal essay
Abstract
In the second decade of the 21st century, academic comics studies is well established as a serious intellectual subject, but for many non-specialists, including university administrators, a sense of frivolity still attaches to comics. This brief essay braids together personal history and intellectual analysis: 1) it compares the cultural position of comics today to the position of novels in the 19th century; 2) it analyzes the complementary nature of the verbal and visual channels; 3) it argues that neither words nor pictures should be considered primary in a narratology of comics; and 4) that comics are eminently well suited to be studied as a branch of literature (though fine arts departments can also stake a claim).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Braithwaite, Jean
(2017)
"Words + Pictures: A Manifesto,"
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature:
Vol. 42:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1957
Included in
American Literature Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Nonfiction Commons
