The French Comics Theory Reader

The French Comics Theory Reader presents a collection of key theoretical texts on comics, spanning a period from the 1960s to the 2010s, written in French and never before translated into English. The publication brings a distinctive set of authors together, uniting theoretical scholars, artists, journalists, and comics critics. Readers will gain access to important debates that have taken place among major French-language comics scholars, including Thierry Groensteen, Benoit Peeters, Jan Baetens, and Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, over the past fifty years. The collection covers a broad range of approaches to the medium, including historical, formal, sociological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic. A general introduction provides an overall context, and, in addition, each of the four thematic sections is prefaced by a brief summary of each text and an explanation of how they have influenced later work. The translations are faithful to the originals while reading clearly in English, and, where necessary, cultural references are clarified.Contributors: Jan Baetens, Gerard Blanchard, Luc Boltanski, Sylvain Bouyer, Philippe Capart, Erwin Dejasse, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, Jean-Claude Glasser, Thierry Groensteen, Manuel Hirtz, Francis Lacassin, Bruno Lecigne, Pascal Lefevre, Jean-Christophe Menu, Harry Morgan, Pascal Ory, Benoit Peeters, Jacques Samson, Barthelemy Schwartz, Michel Serres, Thierry Smolderen, Pierre Sterckx, Jean-Pierre Tamine, Serge Tisseron

Une fois accepté le parti pris adopté par les metteurs en œuvre de The French Comic Theory Reader, à savoir que les écrits francophones sur la bande dessinée appartiennent à un corpus de « French theory », cet ouvrage présente une utile anthologie ou, pour mieux dire, une chrestomathie (dans sa forme anglaise du reader) de textes français, conduisant le lecteur des textes fondateurs des années 1960 jusqu'aux évolutions récentes de la stripologie. L'ouvrage constitue une excellente introduction, en anglais, à la littérature secondaire francophone, pour l'étudiant ès comics studies, ou œuvrant dans les domaines connexes (popular culture studies, media studies, etc.), ou tout simplement pour l'étudiant en culture et civilisation françaises.
The Adamantine >>>

Overall, The French Comics Theory Reader fulfills a crucial possibility condition for the acceleration of international scholarly discussion about comics, in no small part because English has come to function as the academic lingua franca and the texts that are included in the volume are thus rendered accessible to a very wide and diverse audience. In securing this access, The French Comics Theory Reader importantly also adds greatly to the collective memory of comics studies, which is a topic that returns often in the texts gathered in the book.
Charlotte Pylyser, IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE Vol. 15, No. 4 (2014)

The Rise of Comic Studies
Comics & Media and The French Comics Theory Reader testify to the vividness of the debates about comics, both current and past. The varied nature of both volumes (each includes essays by academics, fans, journalists, and practitioners) ensures that questions are opened rather than closed.
Yasco Horsman, Oxford Art Journal Volume 38, Issue 1, Pp. 148-152.

Pour conclure, ce livre est un outil des plus utiles, édité par deux des plus grands spécialistes de la bande dessinée de la nouvelle génération anglophone. L'intérêt de leur perspective est double. D'une part, ils connaissent bien la tradition européenne ayant tous les deux publié plusieurs livres et plusieurs articles sur celle-ci, d'autre part, dans la mesure o๠ils ont aussi publié des études sur les autres traditions (anglaise/britannique, canadienne et américaine), ils ont une distance culturelle et linguistique vis-à -vis de cette tradition européenne, chose qui n'est pas toujours le cas pour les critiques francophones.
Chris Reyns-Chikuma, Belphégor [En ligne], 13-1 | 2015, mis en ligne le 09 mai 2015. URL :

'The French Comics Theory Reader' is to be commended for making these texts available in English for the first time and opening up the field of francophone comics scholarship to English speakers. It functions well as an introduction to a wide and varied critical landscape.
Lisa Tannahill, Modern Language Review, Volume 110, Part 4, October 2015

The French Comics Theory Reader is an impressive collection that gives insight into ongoing debates among French critics, while also integrating organically into Anglo-American discussions. As such, I hope that it facilitates the general movement to translate European comics th

Ann Miller was formerly Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies for French at the University of Leicester. She is now a University Fellow. Bart Beaty is Professor of English and Department Head at the University of Calgary.

The French Comics Theory Reader presents a collection of key theoretical texts on comics, spanning a period from the 1960s to the 2010s, written in French and never before translated into English. The publication brings a distinctive set of authors together, uniting theoretical scholars, artists, journalists, and comics critics. Readers will gain access to important debates that have taken place among major French-language comics scholars, including Thierry Groensteen, Beno

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