Comics in French - The European Bande Dessinee in Context (Hardcover)

Whereas in English-speaking countries comics are for children or adults who should know better, A in France and Belgium the form is recognized as the ninth art and follows in the path of poetry, architecture, painting, and cinema. The bande dessinee comic strip] has its own national institutions, regularly obtains front-page coverage, and has received the accolades of statesmen from De Gaulle onwards. On the way to providing a comprehensive introduction to the most francophone of cultural phenomena, this book will consider national specificity as relevant to an anglophone reader, whilst exploring related issues such as text/image expression, historical precedents, and sociological implication. To do so it will present and analyse priceless manuscripts, a Franco-American rodent, Nazi propaganda, a museum-piece urinal, intellectual gay porn and a prehistoric warrior who is really Zinedine Zidane.