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Graphic Novels & Comics

A guide to finding and researching graphic novels and comics at UL Lafayette.

Graphic Novels / Comics

What are Graphic Novels / Comics?

Scott McCloud, in his landmark book Understanding Comics, refers to comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (McCloud, 1993, p. 20). The graphic novel itself is a single book of comics that tells a story through text and visuals. There has been much debate about graphic novels' place in literature, but there is no denying their abundant power. According to the ProQuest Theses and Dissertations database, students and scholars have used graphic novels and comics to support research in French literature, French language, folklore, social psychology, speech therapy, gender studies, and LGBTQ+ studies. Additionally, Hillary Chute and Marianne DeKoven (2006) explain that the graphic narrative “offers an intricately layered narrative language—the language of comics—that comprises the verbal, the visual, and the way these two representational modes interact on a page” (p. 767). To support this growing field, Dupré Library, through a Friends of the Humanities grant, has acquired a large collection of graphic novels and comics.

References

Chute, H. L., & DeKoven, M. (2006). Introduction: Graphic Narrative. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 52(4), 767-782. doi:10.1353/mfs.2007.0002

McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. Tundra Publishing.