The French Comics Theory Reader

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, Benoît 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, Gérard Blanchard, Luc Boltanski, Sylvain Bouyer, Philippe Capart, Erwin Dejasse, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, Jean-Claude Glasser, Thierry Groensteen, Manuel Hirtz, Francis Lacassin, Bruno Lecigne, Pascal Lefèvre, Jean-Christophe Menu, Harry Morgan, Pascal Ory, Benoît Peeters, Jacques Samson, Barthélémy Schwartz, Michel Serres, Thierry Smolderen, Pierre Sterckx, Jean-Pierre Tamine, Serge Tisseron