Comics and Novelization: A Literary History of Bandes Dessinées by Benoît Glaude (review)

Reviewed by: Comics and Novelization: A Literary History of Bandes Dessinées by Benoît Glaude Patricia Geesey Glaude, Benoît. Comics and Novelization: A Literary History of Bandes Dessinées. Routledge, 2023. ISBN 978-1-032-43664-7. Pp. 205. Comic and graphic novel adaptations of major works of French fiction are well-known and much-loved. Glaude's important and original study offers a close reading of fiction that is derived from a prior comic. Most importantly, this written narrative will maintain a "two-way relationship," one of "mutual emulation" (3) with the original comic or graphic novel. A useful analysis of French-language novelizations of comics, this volume challenges common assumptions regarding literary hierarchies and the nature of intermediality in literature and drawn texts. The volume's introduction sets forth theoretical approaches that are helpful in understanding the literary history of these comics-related works of fiction. Glaude references adaptation studies, intermedia/transmedia research, reception theory, and Gérard Genette's work on the palimpsest as an analytical framework. An extensive list of fictional texts derived from comics or illustrated printed materials is provided in the book's bibliography, which encourages scholars to undertake further study. Many authors of comics-related narratives cited are famous precisely because of their work in traditional comics, including Hergé, René Goscinny, and Joann Sfar. Glaude's study proposes a close reading that informs readers about all media and paratextual works that relate to an original comic, especially relating to "the visual turn of literary writing" (10). Chapter one focuses on earlier comics and associated illustrated texts such as Rodolphe Töpffer's self-novelized Le docteur Festus and Les Pieds-Nickelés à la guerre, appearing as small format serial novels with some drawings (46–50). Chapter two discusses "Enunciative issues of comic verbalizations," which includes a fascinating section on narrative and authorial "voice" in two different examples of a novelization of Tintin adventures. Chapter three explores examples of self-novelization and graphic novels. This chapter suggests that literary adaptation of graphic narratives as a cultural practice might allow artists and writers associated with one medium to highlight their talents through another. Chapter four examines two interrelated questions: "How do you narrate a comics hero's childhood in literary form and how do you do it for young readers?" (124). American comics culture is contrasted with French models relating to origin stories of well-known characters. Glaude provides a fascinating analysis of Goscinny's literary prequel How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When He Was a Little Boy and relates its narrative style to that of the Le petit Nicolas stories, as told from a child's point of view. Chapter four also covers narratives related to the Titeuf comics, the Franco-Belgian work L'écume de l'aube, and La première aventure de Yoko Tsuno by Roger Leloup. The concluding chapter in Comics and Novelization gives an overview of theoretical questions pertaining to adaptation as process, multimodal storytelling, fan fiction, and interconnected narrative formats in new medias. The conclusion also highlights End Page 186 possible new directions for further literary research, namely exploring intermediality in diverse forms of storytelling, as well as looking beyond the novelization of comics to other forms of "textual or icontextual hybridity" (179). End Page 187 Patricia Geesey The University of North Florida Copyright © 2024 American Association of Teachers of French