Ethics in the gutter
Subtitle: empathy and historical fiction in comics
By: Kate Polak
Series: Studies in comics and cartoons; Studies in comics and cartoons
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780814254455; 9780814213537
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Comic books, strips; Graphic novels; Historical fiction; Violence; Empathy; History and criticism
Description: "Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics explores an often-overlooked genre of graphic narratives: those that fictionalize historical realities. While autographics, particularly those that place the memoirist in the context of larger cultural conversations, have been the objects of sustained study, fictional graphic narratives that—as Linda Hutcheon has put it—both “enshrine and question” history are also an important area of study. By bringing narratology and psychological theory to bear on a range of graphic narratives, Kate Polak seeks to question how the form utilizes point of view and the gutter as ethical tools that shape the reader’s empathetic reactions to the content. This book’s most important questions surround how we receive and interpret representations of history, considering the ways in which what we think we know about historical atrocities can be at odds with the convoluted circumstances surrounding violence. Beginning with a new look at Watchmen, and including examinations of such popular series as Scalped and Hellblazer as well as Bayou and Deogratias, the book questions how graphic narratives create an alternative route by which to understand large-scale violence. Ethics in the Gutter explores how graphic narrative representations of violence can teach readers about the possibilities and limitations of empathy and ethics."--Provided by publisher
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-229) and index.
Table of contents: title: Being a dog: transformation, focalization, and memory in Deogratias; title: Just like Sally: rape and reflexivity in Watchmen; title: "We're still here": authenticity and memory in Scalped; title: My children will remember all of the things I tried to forget: Bayou and intergenerational trauma; title: Telling the wound: framing and restricted narration in Hellblazer; title: Conclusion: (The) moving past.