On Comprehending Comics, or Little Nemo in the Land of (Meta)narratology

Abstract

The paper proposes a model of reading comics that combines the perspectives of postclassical narratology and comics studies. A few prominent narratology scholars, such as David Herman, have used comics as a basis for revisions of their theories of narration as a cognitive construct. However, they tend to overlook the formal and medium- -specifi c aspect of graphical narration. On the other hand, comics studies scholars tend to focus on the formal elements of comics systems and overlook the infl uence of those elements on storytelling. The article tries to connect these perspectives through a reference to Kari Kukkonen’s and Charles Hatfi eld’s critical approaches to comics. Hatfi eld’s description of the reading of comics as an interplay of tensions on different semantic levels of the medium leads to Kukkonen’s observation that constructing narration in comics is based on the cognitive process of inference and the creation of hypotheses that are constantly verifi ed by readers who then construct mental images of the storyworlds. The model proposed in the article describes the act of reading comics as a constant oscillation between medium-specifi c formal elements, such as juxtapositions of images, construction of panels, tensions between text and image, and narration as such. Illustrations of the thesis come primarily from Little Nemo in Slumberland by Windsor McCay