BOBC |
Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Vanderbeke2014 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: Themes and motives, Trauma Creators: Glaser, Puschmann-Nahlenz, Vanderbeke Publisher: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier (Trier) Collection: Narrating Loss. Representations of Mourning, Nostalgia and Melancholia in Contemporary Anglophone Fictions |
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Attachments | URLs https://www.academ ... beke_Graphic_Grief |
Abstract |
Comics are fun. This, however, does not necessarily lead to the consequence that they are also funny or unable to cope with serious issues. Tragedy, loss and grief have been a significant element of comics even in those times when they were predominantly read by children and adolescents, and over the last decades such aspects seem to have become one of the dominant features in many narratives and an integral part of the genre as such. Of course, sadness and melancholy also cater to juvenile readers that celebrate gothic gloom, but the success in addressing new audiences indicates that simple weltschmerz is not the primary message. The artistic representation of every aspect of human life has become a persistent objective of comic authors and artists, and grief and sorrow are, of course, not to be dismissed from realistic stories about human experience and emotions. But then, stories of loss and grief are frequently mixed with entertaining elements and funny, sometimes darkly funny, moments. For there is laughter in grief and grief in laughter.
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