Reading across the gutter
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Johannes Riquet
Abstract
This paper offers a metapoetic analysis of the train journeys in Hergé’s Tintin series as a comment on the reading experience, discussing the process of reading comics in terms of a phenomenology of interruption. Comics are structurally dependent on interruptions: divided into strips and panels that are separated by “gutters”, they disrupt the flow of reading. Implying movement and division, mirroring the direction of reading and referring beyond the individual panels in which they appear only partially, Hergé’s trains and railways lines can be usefully understood as diagrams of the reader’s progression from panel to panel. The many accidents and interruptions that mark the railway journeys in Tintin resonate with the anxieties around speed and transportation that accompanied the railroad from its inception; it is argued that these interruptions are transferred to the reader’s experience of the fragmented space of the comic book itself. This paper thus contends that the series’ unified and controlled vision of a global network is disrupted by the spatial structure of the comic book as experienced in the reading process. This disruption is epitomised by the railroad, and Tintin’s trains are diagrammatically related to the process of reading comics as a process marked by interruptions.
Abstract
This paper offers a metapoetic analysis of the train journeys in Hergé’s Tintin series as a comment on the reading experience, discussing the process of reading comics in terms of a phenomenology of interruption. Comics are structurally dependent on interruptions: divided into strips and panels that are separated by “gutters”, they disrupt the flow of reading. Implying movement and division, mirroring the direction of reading and referring beyond the individual panels in which they appear only partially, Hergé’s trains and railways lines can be usefully understood as diagrams of the reader’s progression from panel to panel. The many accidents and interruptions that mark the railway journeys in Tintin resonate with the anxieties around speed and transportation that accompanied the railroad from its inception; it is argued that these interruptions are transferred to the reader’s experience of the fragmented space of the comic book itself. This paper thus contends that the series’ unified and controlled vision of a global network is disrupted by the spatial structure of the comic book as experienced in the reading process. This disruption is epitomised by the railroad, and Tintin’s trains are diagrammatically related to the process of reading comics as a process marked by interruptions.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xi
-
Part I. Phonic dimensions
- The effect of iconicity flash blindness 3
- Iconic treadmill hypothesis 15
- Tracking linguistic primitives 39
- Continuity and change 63
- Iconicity in English literary neologisms 85
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Part II. Cognitive dimensions
- Toward a theory of poetic iconicity 99
- The ocean of surging emotion 119
- Ekphrasis, cognition, and iconicity 135
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Part III. Multimodal dimensions
- Deleuze and the Baroque diagram 153
- Bridging the gap between image and metaphor through cross-modal iconicity 167
- Iconicity, ‘intersemiotic translation’ and the sonnet in the visual poetry of Avelino De Araújo 191
- Reading across the gutter 209
- The role of iconicity in package design 229
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Part IV. Performative dimensions
- Iconicity in Buddhist language and literature 249
- Iconization of sociolinguistic variables 263
- Performative iconicity 287
-
Part V. New dimensions of iconicity
- Why notational iconicity is a form of operational iconicity 303
- Iconicity, ambiguity, interpretability 321
- The iconicity of literary analysis 331
- Author index 345
- Subject index 347
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xi
-
Part I. Phonic dimensions
- The effect of iconicity flash blindness 3
- Iconic treadmill hypothesis 15
- Tracking linguistic primitives 39
- Continuity and change 63
- Iconicity in English literary neologisms 85
-
Part II. Cognitive dimensions
- Toward a theory of poetic iconicity 99
- The ocean of surging emotion 119
- Ekphrasis, cognition, and iconicity 135
-
Part III. Multimodal dimensions
- Deleuze and the Baroque diagram 153
- Bridging the gap between image and metaphor through cross-modal iconicity 167
- Iconicity, ‘intersemiotic translation’ and the sonnet in the visual poetry of Avelino De Araújo 191
- Reading across the gutter 209
- The role of iconicity in package design 229
-
Part IV. Performative dimensions
- Iconicity in Buddhist language and literature 249
- Iconization of sociolinguistic variables 263
- Performative iconicity 287
-
Part V. New dimensions of iconicity
- Why notational iconicity is a form of operational iconicity 303
- Iconicity, ambiguity, interpretability 321
- The iconicity of literary analysis 331
- Author index 345
- Subject index 347
