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Call for papers

InterArtes, n. 5, 2024

Editors-in-Chief: Laura Brignoli, Silvia Zangrandi

Department of Humanities

Università IULM - Milan

Literati, literature and comics

Since the Sixties, when studies in comics developed in the Western world in different disciplinary domains, there has been an exponential growth in scientific contributions on its language and authors. Historical reconstructions, sociological studies, cultural interpretation, semiotic and linguistic analyses and intermedial comparisons have provided, over these years, a historical, theoretical and methodological framework able to define the language, its shapes, its genres and evolutions, its dialogue with the arts, its aesthetic values, and its ideological and cultural core. However, we believe there is still a lot to explore and define, especially in the much-debated relationships between comics and literature in recent years. Whereas in its previous issues InterArtes delved into border permeability, the aesthetic of the hybrid, the relationship between artistic creation and automation, “Literati, Literature and comics” aims now at contributing to defining and outlining, in an empirical, analytical and historical way, the reception of comics among literati, and the possible general aesthetic consequences in the authors’ poetics and productions.

Firstly, the objective is to investigate, in both a diachronic and synchronic perspective, how literati confronted themselves with comics in the past and how they are doing so today, both through critical reflection and aesthetic involvement.

- By ‘critical reflection’ we mean the reception of comics by literary authors. The aim is to reconstruct the way comics, as a language and an aesthetic object, have emerged in essays, epistolary works, and correspondences, as well as in novels, short stories or poems within the processes of thematization, to understand if and how this confrontation affected their production and their idea of literature itself. The research can be conducted by focusing both on intertextual and metatextual phenomena within the critical and literary production of an author, and on the perception of a comic book or a cartoonist in different books by literati. To mention only a few examples, Amélie Nothomb stated more than once her passion for Tintin by Hergé, even stating to ‘Le Soir’ in 2014 that she learnt to read before the age of three thanks to Tintin’s adventures. Regardless of its authenticity, the statement reminds us of Italo Calvino’s Six memos for the Next Millenium. According to the author, he learned to read comic stories in the ‘Corriere dei Piccoli’ well before attending school, thanks to the images. A passion rooted in childhood, as was also the case for Ray Bradbury with Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, or for James Ballard, in love with Terry and the Pirates adventures and intolerant/impatient of the humoristic comic strips of the Thirties in Great Britain, appreciated, instead, by George Orwell, who praised authors such as Nicolas Bentley and Ronald Searle, in a 1949 article on the ‘Observer’.

- By ‘aesthetic involvement’, we refer, instead, to the writers’ participation in the creation of comics, as authors of subjects or scripts, or as supervisors of adaptations of their own texts. It also includes possible ways and forms of experimenting based on and inspired by the comparison with the language of comics, the research of new narrative solutions, even hybrid ones, for original stories. There are plenty of examples also from this creative perspective, such as the involvement of Michel Houellebecq adapting La Carte et le territoire, documented by precise interventions on the dialogues of the characters through the emails exchanged with the comic artist Alain Dual, attached to the volume released in 2014. Turning to some Italian examples, we can mention Cesare Zavattini, who, in the Thirties, wrote the subject for the first Italian science-fiction comic book, Saturno contro la Terra, then Elio Vittorini, Dino Buzzati and Pier Paolo Pasolini, from post-World War II to the Sixties. From the Eighties onwards, the number of writers involved has considerably increased, also giving rise to hybrid solutions between prose and comics, such as in Sarti Antonio. Come cavare un ragno dal buco (2010) by Loriano Macchiavelli, illustrated by Otto Gabos, following the model of La straordinaria invenzione di Hugo Cabret by the America writer Brian Selznick (2007). Finally, in the English-speaking countries as well, between the late 20th century and the new Millenium, the situation became even more complex, considering authors such as Joe R. Lansdale, who effortlessly moves from comic scripts to novels and can write stories such as Batman. Captured by the Engines (1991). Among the four authors that from the early Eighties brought the British comics to an international level, namely Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano, Dave McKean, the first three are also prose novelists, both for adults and young readers. So, these examples are sufficient to describe a vast territory, still largely unexplored scientifically.

Secondly, “Literati, literature and comics” dedicates a section to the analysis of comic adaptations and rewritings of modern and contemporary classics. In fact, adaptations and rewritings are research areas that have boasted significant theoretical and empirical contributions for several years, but comics remain a language less addressed than others. For this specific section, among the many possible examples, it suffices to mention the recent work of Fred Duval and Florent Calvez, Sept Personnages (2021), a crossover starting from Molière's comedies. Also noteworthy is the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds reimagining Madame Bovary (Gemma Bovary, 1999), as well as the work of Marino Magliani and Marco D'Aponte, who, in 2021, rewrote La Luna e i Falò in comic form, integrating in the text the narrative of Pavese's final days, or, as one more example, the adaptation of Heart of Darkness by Peter Kuper, also in 2021.

Methods of submission

The texts submitted, which will have a theoretical or analytical framework with theoretical premises, must be unpublished and sent in Word format, in compliance with the journal's editorial rules available on the website.

Languages accepted: Italian, English, French, Spanish.

Articles should be sent, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical note, by 30 July 2024 to: interartes@iulm.it.

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