Groensteen - System of Comics - 2007 PDF [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

The System of

CO

ICS

Thierry Groensteen Tronsloted by Bart Beoty ond Nick Nguyen

CONTE NT$ www.uprt"&~State.ms.u.s

Tbe l:niversiry Press ofMississippi is a member of rhe A~sociation of Americm University Presses.

Originally published in 1999 by Presses Universitain.>s de

FraElCe

as -~Y#hne rk Ia

bande dessinie Copyright©

2007

Foreward vii

l'resses Universitain."S de France

Translation and !Oreword copyright © J..007 by University Press of Mississippi All rights

re.~erved

lntroduction I

.\l[:mufactun."ge that it encloses. It can go so far as to instruct the reader on what must be

'I

50 The Spotio-Topicol System read, or even as

The Spolio·Topicol System 51

far as to supply a reading protocol, or even an interpretation of

the panel. lndeed, if the frame and ehe image are often unired by a relationship of transparency or redundancy, the frame can also connote a certain form of irony

or denial. Some time ago, Michel Rio suggested ways of rhinkingabout ehe comics ftame, being careful to indicate: "we approach this problern in srudying (always wirhout preoccupying ourselves wich ehe signifieds of comics) some general tendencies in the choice of organization of ftames and of ehe Iayouts. "39 This idea has already been picked up by Benoit Peeters, who denounced it in ehe following terms:

On this point, my pe5pective will be entirely different, to be the exoct oppostte of this seemingly insignlficont porenthesis. The only monner of escoping from formolism thot, often rightly, wos reprooched by the semiologists, is to toke into occount these "orgonizotionol choices" in rehman with thot which Michel Rio colls "the signlfieds of comics," thot is to soy, to not destroy this quoskngonic coherence thot gives eoch element its reoson for being 40 The position of Peeters is also mine. But I allow myself to add that only a reasoned description of ehe spatio-topical appararus can make the organization of different possible choices comprehensible wiehin ehe system, and thereby supply a view of ehe totality of the criteria that allow the appreciation of rhe pertinence of the choices that have been made. Regarding the relation between ehe formal organization and rhe signified, ehe example f ehe surfaces invested by the represenration? This opposition is redism1rer