Text / Image Mosaics in French Culture: Emblems and Comic Strips by Laurence Grove

Abstract

MLR, I03. I, 2oo8 249 Making personal traumas public through the process ofwriting, Fell argues, can be interpreted as fulfillinga cathartic function, as itcontributes towards transcending many divides atwork inherwriting. As La Place has already been the subject of study guides in both English and French, paired with Une femmeon the grounds that each deals with parental death, it may be that amore comparative approach, highlighting thedifferences between La Place and La Honte, and giving more prominence to the tension and complementar ity that bind them together,would have provided even greater scope for innovative analysis. Even so, this guide, with itsuseful bibliography of both works, plus essays and interviews by Ernaux, and critical studies of her aeuvre,will certainly appeal to students,who will find in ita verywell-written and highly accessible synthesis of the rapidly growing quantity of scholarlymaterial on Ernaux's works. SWANSEA UNIVERSITY NATHALIE MORELLO Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture: Emblems and Comic Strips. By LAURENCE GROVE. (Studies inEuropean Cultural Transition, 32)Aldershot: Ashgate. 2005. xiv+ I87 PP. ?5. ISBN 978-0-7546-3488-I. As thebande dessinee progressively attains the academic credibility itwas fordecades denied, a series of recent studies have begun tomap out this historically rich and culturally complex field of enquiry. In discussions of the form's origins, scholars remain divided: whereas some stress contemporariness (and privilege theworks of Topffer or the appearance of the Journal de Mickey as moments of emergence), others gesture vaguely towards pre-textual precursors-the paintings ofLascaux, for instance-to indicate a more ancient and more extravagant genealogy. One of the principal strengths of Laurence Grove's Text/Image Mosaics inFrench Culture is its author's refusal toaccept unquestioningly any received ideas regarding thehistory of the comic. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of theFrench emblem book, he aims todemonstrate-in the lightof the evolving history ofprint culture thecontinuities and discontinuities apparent in the comparative analysis of the emblem and theBD. Grove does not fall into the trap of elaborating a seamless teleology linking the two forms,but instead, through a process of 'parallelism' (p. xiv), explores the impact, at two significant, transitionalmoments in the history of print technology, of these hybrid formscombining textand image. Close engagement with case studies permits the cautious elaboration of parallels between fields normally considered discrete. After an introductory section discussing the history of print culture and the dis tinctiveness of the two forms under consideration, the study is divided into four principal parts-Theoretics, Production, Thematics, and Reception- each ofwhich devotes a chapter to the emblem and theBD in turn,before synthesizing reflections in an afterword.The emphasis ison continuity and discontinuity, exploring theways in which an earlymodern 'emblematicmentality' might be seen topersist, in radically altered forms, in a postmodern age. The result is a comprehensive initial engagement with questions of taxonomy and critical tradition, followed by a series of studies contrasting the hybridity ofwoodcuts, for instance,with theGallicization ofDisney inLe journal de Mickey-that would not usually coexist in a singlemonograph. There is an emphasis on the progressive institutionalization of the forms in question, with close attention paid both to genre construction and to questions of authorship. The aim isneither the conflation ofwhat are two very different forms,nor the elaboration of an imaginary genealogy linking the emblem and theBD. Instead, Grove holds the two genres in tensionwithin the frame of text/image studies (and in the lightof the mindsets towhich this field gives access). He observes in conclusion that emblems 250 Reviews and BDs have evolved in parallel yet ultimately contradictory ways, the former in creasingly emphasizing textand narration, the lattermoving more towards a recit en images inwhich conventional narrative collapses. This is a highly readable study by an author who has confident mastery of the diverse, even heterogeneous range ofmaterial under consideration. In relation to the BD itself,Grove moves far beyond an often excessively restricted canon to give a clear sense of the genre's historical texture.At the same time, he focuses on under explored key titles, such as the collaborationist Temeraire (the post-war trajectories of whose authors are tracked in illuminating detail). The argument is consistently well illustrated, both in terms of the variety of...