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GRAPHIC NARRATIVE PROJECT
Andrea Lunsford (English) on Pictures without Words: Wordless comics and
Wednesday February 13, 2013 | 06:00 -08:00 PM | Board Room

Pictures without Words: Wordless comics and the movement of graphic narrative

Wordless narratives, which have been around for a long time, are often associated with the woodcut tradition in books and particularly with the work of Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1889-1982), who spent much of his life in France creating the “novels in images” for which he was greatly acclaimed. We will begin with a discussion of Masereel’s “Passionate Journey” (1919), before moving to two more contemporary works, Eric Drooker’s “Flood! A Novel in Pictures” (1992) and Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” (2007). Sharing narratives of strange journeys in which their protagonists move through new and alien territories, these wordless works articulate the unique potential of graphic narratives to foster such movement. Elaborating on these image spaces as their heroes move through time, these works also demonstrate the capacity of graphic narratives for worldmaking, offering striking visions of urban life. In our discussion, we aim to analyze the narrative structure and movement of these wordless works, paying close attention to their senses of space and time.