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Resource type: Thesis/Dissertation Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Smida2010 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "From Hell", Campbell. Eddie, Crime comics, History comics, Moore. Alan, United Kingdom Creators: Smida Publisher: University of Dayton (Dayton) |
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Attachments | URLs https://etd.ohioli ... disposition=inline |
Abstract |
When Alan Moore began his work on From Hell in the 1980s, the popular conception of the graphic novel as “low-brow” art still reigned. The inclusion of extensive annotations as an appendix to the novel, providing references and explanations in a manner that reflects academic conventions, attempts to situate his novel as not “merely” a creative fictionalization of the Ripper murders, but as a genuine, scholarly hypothesis as to the identity and motive of the killer. His hypothesis is so fantastic, however, that it nearly demands to be dismissed as pure conspiracy theory. Conflicting notions of scholarship and conspiracy raise questions about the abilities of narrative historiography to provide insight into the past. Moore grapples with issues of research and myth-building in a second, graphic appendix, and the two appendices work together examining the limitations of academic discourse as a whole and its ability to provide clear-cut answers to historical events.
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