Paper Assignement #2: Style of Drawing and Narrative Structures

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST

DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE

 

Language, Literature and Culture 597M

Special Topics: Mutations of Laughter in Comics – dimensions of graphic humor in Brazilian contemporary visual culture

Prof. Benjamim PICADO

 

Paper Assignment #2: Towards a Poetics of Graphic Humor - Style and Narrative

 

Take into consideration the following quotations from reading items coming from the first part of the course – all concerning issues related to the two dimensions of the production of laughter in graphic humor - either in terms of the particular drawing styles of caricature and cartoon, or in the narrative strategies employed, with emphasis put on the episodic structures based upon disjunctions.

 

Firstly, two quotations from E.H. Gombrich´s Art and Illusion, in which the art historian discusses the experiment of caricature: 

 

E.H. Gombrich, “The experiment of caricature", p.275

 

“Our starting-point at the time was the question of why portrait caricature, the playful distortion of a victim’s face, makes only so late an appearance in Western art. The word and the institution of caricature date only from the last years of the sixteenth century, and the inventors of the art were not the pictorial propagandists who existed in one form or another for centuries before but those most sophisticated and refined of artists, the brothers Carracci. Few of their caricatures have been identified, but according to liter­ary sources which we have no reason to doubt, they also invented the joke of transforming a victim’s face into that of an animal, or even a lifeless implement, which caricaturists have practised ever since”

 

E.H. Gombrich, “The experiment of caricature", p. 269

 

"I believe there are two conditions which account for this success in the illusion of life which can do without any illusion of reality: one is the experience of generations of artists with the effect of pictures, another the willingness of the public to accept the grotesque and simplified, partly because its lack of elaboration guarantees the absence of contradictory clues. If this sounds chilling, it is perhaps lucky that these points about the discovery of the springs of expression within the context of pictorial entertainment have been anticipated by an artist who did not have my particular psychological axe to grind: I am referring to a pamphlet on physiognomics published in 845 by the humourist and draughtsman Rodolphe Töpffer of Geneva."

Now, other two references from the text of the linguist Salvatore Attardo, concerning the textual structure of jokes, in his Humorous Texts:

 

Salvatore Attardo, "A theory of humorous texts", p. 80:

 

"A very useful concept in narratology and hence in the analysis of humorous texts, is that of 'minimal' story or narrative. I have thus introduced the concept of 'micro-narrative' . A micro-narrative is the simplest possible narrative, in the sense that it consists of one action/event. An event is a 'change of state' (...). An event may be brought about by an agent or by other forces (e.g., nature) . Events may or may not be significant from the point of view of the fabula."

Salvatore Attardo, "A theory of humorous texts", p. 89:

 

“The function of joke preparation is quite significant: in order for there to be incongruity, there needs to be a background of expectations to be violated. Preparation fulfills this requirement. Narrative development can, in fact, be achieved through numerous means, so that we are not dealing with just a necessary and sufficient condition."

 

Now, pay a close attention to these instances of the graphic works of several daily strips, coming from Hergé, Richard Outcault, Charles Schulz, and Bill Waterson: 

 

Hergé, Tintin at Tibet (1960)

 Richard Outcault, Origin of a New Species (1894)

Charles Schulz, Peanuts (1955)

 

 Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (1986)

 

With all this taken into perspective, I ask you to consider the possibility of approaching these examples of some of the classics in the field of graphic humor, trying to bring to the fore those aspects of his artistic production connected to those claims about the junctions between the graphic style of drawing (either in terms of caricature or cartoon) and the episodic structure proper to the unity of the events in each joke: as in previous exercises, I advise you to take a straight attention towards the materials themselves, without fogetting to articulate your impressions with the problems brought about by the course´s bibliography. Try do develop these points in an argument at the limit of 2.000 words.

 

Deadline: April, 18 (Patriot's Day), by email)