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La tradition de la lecture populaire en Russie remonte à la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, quand à côté de nombreuses traductions des textes étrangers (majoritairement français) on voit apparaître les premiers spécimens populaires nationaux: les œuvres de Mikhaïl Tchoulkov, Matvej Komarov, Fiodor Emine, etc. Mais c’est Thaddée Boulgarine qui doit être considéré comme un vrai fondateur de la littérature de masse russe. Éditeur de la revue « L’Abeille du Nord », journal largement lu en Russie aux années 1820, et auteur du premier bestseller russe, Ivan Vyjiguine (1829), Boulgarine – figure de proue de la lecture populaire – a été violemment critiqué par Pouchkine et boudé par la critique soviétique ; ce n’est qu’à la fin du XXe siècle que son rôle dans l’évolution littéraire a été réévalué. Dans Ivan Vyjiguine Boulgarine construit, en combinant diverses traditions narratives, un modèle de la lecture d’évasion prétendant à une spécificité nationale. Faddey Boulgarin and the Northern Bee : the sources of mass literature in RussiaThe tradition of popular reading in Russia originated in the second half of the eighteenth century, when specimens of the first national novels – the works of Mikhail Chulkov, Matvej Komarov, Fedor Emin, etc. – were published along with numerous translations of foreign texts (mainly French). However, it is Faddey Bulgarin who should be looked upon as the real founding father of Russian popular literature. Bulgarin was the editor of the newspaper "The Northern bee", which enjoyed a great success in Russia, not only in the 1820s, but later as well. He was also the author of the first bestseller in the history of Russian prose, i.e. Ivan Vyjigin (1829). Bulgarin – the leading figure of the Russian mass reading – was harshly criticized by Pushkin, and later was negatively assessed by the Soviet literary criticism. His role in the literary evolution was revised only at the end of the twentieth century. In his novel Vyjigin Bulgarin, combines a variety of narrative traditions and creates a model of light reading, which pretends to reflect Russian national identity.

Aaron Kashtan’s latest book, Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality and the Book of the Future, is the 14th in the series “Studies in Comics and Cartoons”, edited by renowned comics scholars Jared Gardner (Projections, 2015) and Charles Hatfield (Alternative Comics, 2008). Other prestigious contributors to this series include the likes of Frederick Luis Aldama (2018), Marc McKinney (Redrawing French Empires, 2013), and Robert Harvey (A Gallery of Rogues: Cartoonists’ Self-Caricatures, 19...

Le festival d’Angoulême joue un rôle déclencheur dans la patrimonialisation de la bande dessinée, puisque c’est dans son sillage que se construit la première collection publique de planches originales. Le succès de la manifestation incite les acteurs locaux et nationaux à construire un Centre national afin d’institutionnaliser la bande dessinée à Angoulême, sans exclure les ambiguïtés sur les missions de cette institution. En dépit d’un rayonnement limité, le musée participe à l’artification de la bande dessinée à travers sa politique de conservation et son discours militant.

The aim of this essay is to determine whether the concept of the middlebrow can also be translated to cultural and historical contexts other than the Anglo-American one in which it first originated. More particularly, we seek to investigate whether the term can usefully be applied to the Italian literary scene of the first part of the twentieth century. After a short introduction of the different historical and critical uses of the term in Britain and the U.S., we turn to Italy of the early twentieth century for a description of the numerous new developments in writing, publishing and marketing literature. Subsequently, we assess the different ways in which these changes have been analysed and conceptualised in Italian literary criticism, so as to point out the lacunae in this scholarship precisely with regard to writing that falls in between the categories of popular and high literature. By means of one more detailed case study, i.e. the work of the once popular and now forgotten writer Pitigrilli, we argue that his novels share many of the characteristics of the literature labelled as middlebrow in an Anglo-American context. The introduction of this term in Italian criticism, we argue, would undoubtedly lead to a more accurate assessment of his work – and that of other writers like him - within Italian literary history. ispartof: Belphégor vol:15 issue:2 status: published

Comme l’explique Deman dans son introduction, il y a de nombreuses raisons qui font que les comics ont mis si longtemps pour etre reconnus comme un art aux USA et au Canada (Deman est canadien et enseigne a l’universite de Waterloo, en Ontario). Il cite alors plusieurs facteurs donnes par divers auteurs. Parmi ceux-ci: le format, puisque les comics etaient jetables (Sabin); la popularite souvent presentee comme equivalente a la vulgarite, et l’escapisme (Groensteen); la crainte que l’image p...

The middlebrow novel has often been characterized as a highly didactic and pedagogical literary form, that aims to combine entertainment with education and instruction. In reaction to the often rather generalizing accounts of the middlebrow novel's pedagogical function, this essay wants to sort out the different types of knowledge that can be involved and the different narrative and rhetorical means that are used to communicate these literary lessons. Focusing on two bestselling Dutch-language middlebrow novels from the interwar years - Whitey by Ernest Claes and Rubber by Madelon Szekely-Lulofs - it is shown how different novelistic genres - the rural novel and the colonial novel - are almost naturally associated with different kinds of knowledge, but nevertheless display remarkably similar pedagogical strategies and techniques.

The basic purpose of this book is to de-construct the connection between Jewishness and comics. Since the late 1990s, many academic and newspaper articles, academic books, and even novels, have argued that Jewish culture had an essential and strong influence in the business and art of comics from the 1930s onward. Martin Lund, a postdoctoral student at Linnaeus University (Sweden), does not deny that there is a connection but also questions past evidence that has been too often circumstantia...

This chapter deliberates the merits of whether French-language comics may be construed as a salient example of a new cultural middlebrow. It argues that the comics artist introduces new ways of seeing shared worlds, stressing the referential aspects typical of the literary middlebrow, but not of the high-brow, which is characterised by a high degree of self-consciousness. Moreover, where these special cognitive windows open out onto social and political realities that trouble a middlebrow audience, they can offer alternative, sometimes challenging perspectives. These claims are tested through analyses of Marjane Satrapi’s contemporary classic Persepolis and Riad Sattouf’s on-going saga L’Arabe du futur. The chapter concludes with a brief digression into the colourful, metaphysical universe of Joann Sfar’s Le Chat du rabbin.

While the connection between seriality and comics in the twentieth century has frequently been a subject of study, far less attention has been paid to the role of serialisation in the previous century, when the language of comics gradually developed in the illustrated and satirical press. This article discusses a heterogeneous group of graphic narratives published in various European countries between the 1830s and the 1880s, before a new generation of comic magazines influenced by American newspaper strips, transformed this emerging field into the autonomous medium of comics. Serial works flourished during this period and included diverse modes, such as series of “graphic novels,” the use of recurring characters, the serialisation of picture stories in humour periodicals, and the use of graphic narratives as a regular feature in the illustrated news magazines. By providing a panoramic survey of various types of serial texts, the article suggests that the hybrid nature of these graphic narratives and the publishing strategies applied to them can be better understood if considered in relation to the larger context of nineteenth-century print culture, rather than in comparison with the future of the medium.

Cet ouvrage dirige par deux professeurs de l’Institute of Education de l’Universite de Londres rend compte d’une recherche collective impliquant plusieurs chercheurs de differentes institutions dont la British Library et articulant leurs reflexions autour des jeux de cour de recreation (playground) des enfants. Cette recherche se situe explicitement et volontairement dans la continuite de celles effectuees par les epoux Opie, celebre couple de chercheurs anglais ayant publie pendant trente a...

This issue of Belphégor explores the various relationships and interdependencies between book production and distinctions of taste by examining how the material aspects of literary texts, such as the cover, binding, typography, and paper stock, reflect or even determine their cultural status. For example, a reduction in size or the use of cheaper materials and technologies could decrease costs and increase profits, as the text could be produced in larger quantities and marketed to a broader r...

As a technique, collage is a material mode of cutting and pasting distant elements – or indeed a simulation of that process. As a subversive act, it is an instrument of detournement of pre-formed messages, “une machine a bouleverser le monde.” Louis Aragon (1921) 1933/34 schuf Max Ernst nach La femme 100 tetes und La fille qui voulut entrer au Carmel seinen dritten Collageroman mit dem Titel Une semaine de bonte und dem Untertitel Les septs elements capitaux. Er besteht aus 183 Collagen, ein...

At the time of his first appearance in 1967 the Corto Maltese comics marked a turning point in the world of comics : the complexity of its protagonist and the subtlety of the plot were revolutionary. They were indeed “literary” comics : its author Hugo Pratt declared he was aiming to create “letteratura disegnata” – drawn literature. Corto Maltese was at first published in comic-magazines for children like Corriere dei Piccoli, then it moved to a new type of magazine that was more adult-oriented and had intellectual ambitions, like Linus. Finally Una ballata del mare salato, Corto Maltese’s first adventure, was re-published in 1972 in book form by Mondadori, a major publishing house. Corto Maltese’s literary qualities and its publication history are two innovative aspects of these comics, which elevate them from the status of “popular literature” to achieve “cultural” acknowledgement. At the same time, Hugo Pratt was a great consumer of “popular” fiction, comics and adventure/action movies, which he used as sources of inspiration for his comics. He was a fierce defender of the “popular” origins of his work and refused to call himself an “artist”. This essay investigates these two apparently opposed aspects of the Corto Maltese comics. I will argue that Hugo Pratt aimed to overcome the “cultural” gap between the genres and the different media and to demolish the wall between “high” and “popular” culture.

For the last few decades romance has been the popular genre par excellence in the English-speaking world. With sales figures that average around $ 1.36 billion a year, a readership of nearly 75 million people in the U.S. alone and a 13.4 % share of the American consumer book market in 2011, the popular romance novel is by far the best-selling genre in America (“About the Romance Genre”). In 2010 a staggering 8,240 new romance titles were released in the U.S., and 469 of these novels became na...

Charles G.D. Roberts’ 1892/1896 short story ‘Lou’s Clarionet’ focuses on the potential attack by a black panther, a shadowy creature that is at once dangerous and comforting, real and fantastic, disturbing and uncertain. As the rector of the parish guides his sleigh along the road on a snowy Christmas eve, he is shadowed by a panther, which attempts to leap onto the sleigh, bringing the dark forces of the primeval (and prime evil) forest against the good Christian priest. Similar episodes are present in many of Roberts’ animal stories, including those focusing specifically on the black panther such as ‘Watchers of the Campfire’ (1905). By analysing Roberts’ use of the menacing, somewhat fantastical presence of the panther in the woods, this paper argues that the fantastic (and dark supernatural) was given a place in the construction of Canadian wilderness and identity alongside the more familiar romantic images of benign nature. Is the panther real or imagined ? The anthropomorphizing of wild animals through Roberts’ writing, part of a genre of Canadian writing that included the work of Edward Thompson Seton and others, ensured the mystique of the Canadian wilderness, making it at once familiar and fantastic and creating an important and destabilising dichotomy in the construction of a sense of Canadian identity. Roberts’ writing, with menacing panther and other animals carrying out Roberts’ interpretation of their instinctive actions, foreshadows similar characterizations found in the later work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien but sets these animal characterizations (both fantastic and realist) within a discourse of national identity construction and the tension between colonial and metropolitan world views.

A faire

Si James Matthew Barrie n’a eu de cesse de transformer le personnage et les aventures de Peter Pan, il en a également modifié le décor. En effet, l’île de Neverland s’est substituée à Kensington Gardens, territoire originel de Peter dans The Little White Bird (1902), justement sous-titrée Adventures in Kensington Gardens. L’objectif du présent article est de comprendre de quelle manière l'auteur a construit les territoires au fil des réécritures. Le choix du motif insulaire apparaît comme le résultat d’une forte influence des romans d’aventures dont Barrie était un lecteur assidu. La construction de Neverland semble s’être opérée en plusieurs étapes dans le processus d’écriture, l’auteur ayant ébauché la figure de l’île dans des oeuvres antérieures. Barrie s’est finalement approprié cette topographie ilienne, qui devient le lieu de l’atemporalité et de l’amnésie, dans Peter Pan bien sûr, mais également dans The Admirable Crichton (1902) et Mary Rose (1920). Pourtant si la transposition spatiale de Kensington Gardens à Neverland semble changer radicalement le cadre des aventures de Peter, il n’en subsiste pas moins des éléments communs qui mettent en lumière certains aspects de la poétique de l’espace Barrien. While constantly transforming the character and the adventures of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie also modified their setting. The island of Neverland took the place of Kensington Gardens, the original location of Peter in The Little White Bird (1902), which was rightly subtitled Adventures in Kensington Gardens. The goal of this article is to understand how the author created these territories through successive rewritings. The choice of the motif of the island appears to be due to the strong influence of the adventure novels of which Barrie was a constant reader. Neverland was built in several stages. Previous works already showed traces of it. Barry finally took full possession of this island topography marked by amnesia and outside of time in Peter Pan, of course, but also in The Admirable Crichton (1902) and Mary Rose (1920). However, even if the change of location from Kensington Gardens to Neverland seems to radically change the setting of Peter’s adventures, common elements remain that allow us to shed light onto some aspects of Barry’s poetics of space.

La plus grande partie des livres de James Matthew Barrie, dont en particulier Peter Pan explorent le rapport entre le monde des adultes et celui des enfants, avec une place d’honneur réservée à la mort car seuls les enfants morts (comme son frère aîné David) peuvent rester jeunes pour toujours. Cet article examine les mécanismes à travers lesquels Barrie a utilisé la littérature pour explorer ses rapports complexes avec l’univers enfantin duquel, comme nous tous, il a été un jour expulsé. Nous verrons comment son exil traumatisant du monde de l’enfance l’a empêché à tout jamais d’habiter normalement le monde des adultes. En même temps nous examinerons le problème contraire dont souffre le personnage de Peter Pan: celui d’être pris au piège d’une enfance éternelle, et d’être par conséquent privé des plaisirs de l’âge adulte. Most of the works of James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan in particular, explore the relationship between the adult's world and the child's one, with the death set in a privileged location, since only the dead children (as his older brother David) are able to remain as children forever. The following pages show the way in which Barrie explored through literature the complex relationship he had with the world of children from which, like all of us, one day he was expelled. We will see that the way he lived this traumatic exile from his childhood made him unable to ever join the adult world in a normal way. At the same time we will see the opposite problem his character Peter Pan suffers, as he is trapped in an eternal child and deprived of all the pleasures of the adult world.

Peter Pan apparait pour la premiere fois dans un recit enchâsse occupant cinq chapitres d’un roman publie par James Matthew Barrie en 1902, adresse aux adultes et intitule The Little White Bird. Son histoire est racontee par le capitaine W., celibataire d’âge mur, a un petit garcon, David, qu’il emprunte – qu’il songe meme a voler – a ses parents dont il a en secret encourage l’union. Il fait a l’enfant le recit de son origine, de sa naissance, en meme temps qu’il s’invente un fils imaginaire...

Before Peter Pan was published in the form of a novel one hundred years ago, J.M. Barrie’s story of “the boy who would not grow up” was brought to life on stage. The first performances took place in London as early as 1904, following which the play was quickly brought to New York, under the supervision of Barrie’s impresario and friend, Charles Frohman. It was an immediate and unanimous success everywhere it went from the very beginning. In 1924, as J.M. Barrie had not yet published the defin...