The French Comics Theory Reader: Bartholomew of Messina and Cultural Life at the Court of Manfred of Sicily: Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels

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"