Abstract
This research addresses visual narrativity in the case of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis. This novel is an autobiographical memoir about the Iranian-born author’s childhood and early 20s and a new form of literature ‘depicting’ a story with both image and text together, ‘visual narrativity’. In narrative studies visual narrativity refers to written images in traditional text-based novels and narrativity of visual images in paintings. Significantly, graphic novels combine these two aspects of visuality and narrativity. What matters in Satrapi’s artistic world is not its genre style but the storytelling medium as she ‘writes’ images and ‘draws’ a text. Moreover, this unconventional novel offers the pleasure of ‘reading’ the story as it ‘depicts’ Marji’s outcry for freedom and independence. In other words, the novel’s artistic and functional, visual narrativity is conducive for reader identification: Satrapi’s signature hand drawings in black & white and episodic structure as well as her compelling storytelling sprinkled with a good sense of humor. In summary, graphic novels help readers and scholars to transcend the boundary of novels, paintings, comics and revisit their natural process of appreciating narratives, “painting a picture,” literally and figuratively.
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