Fabrice Leroy, Sfar so far - Identity, History, Fantasy, and Mimesis in Joann Sfar's Graphic Novels
Leuven University Press, 2015.
304 p.
EAN 9789462700062
59,00 EUR
Présentation de l'éditeur :
Sfar So Far is the first monograph in any language devoted to the graphic novels of Joann Sfar, an artist whose abundant and innovative work has profoundly marked the contemporary French comics scene. This essay examines how, over the past two decades, Sfar has constructed an idiosyncratic universe with its own thematic and stylistic recurrences: a playful drafting style, contrasting with the thoughtful introduction of historical, theological, and philosophical matters; a sophisticated use of literary, filmic, musical, and pictorial references; an exploration of his own Jewish heritage in the context of a multicultural, postcolonial French society; an affinity for magic realism, fairy tales, heroic fantasy, the fantastique, and science fiction, often filtered through irony or parody; and a predilection for romantic musings and an interest in unconventional love stories.
Sommaire :
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Sfar so Far
Chapter One: Rewriting Jewishness. On Counter-Violence, Sexuality, and Humor in Pascin and Klezmer
1. French Anti-Semitism in the Twenty-First Century: New and Old Trends
2. A New Sephardic Consciousness
3. On Two Narrative Prototypes of Jewishness in Pascin
4. Variations on Guilt, Transgression, and Violence in Klezmer
Chapter Two: Sfar's Historiographics. On the Representation of History and Memory in Les Carnets d'Odessa and La Comtesse Éponyme
1. Framing Odessa as a "Lieu de Mémoire:" Sfar's Carnet d'Odessa
2. Sfar's Ironic Take on the Enlightenment in Les Lumières de la France
Chapter Three: Painting Painters. On Mimesis, Meta-Representation, and Intertextuality in Pascin, Le Chat du Rabbin, and Chagall en Russie
1. Pascin: Image and Reality
2. Sfar Conjures Marc Chagall (Again): The Politics of Visual Representation in Le Chat du Rabbin
3. Painting the Painter: Meta-Representation and Magic Realism in Joann Sfar's Chagall en Russie
Chapter Four: Reinventing Fantastique Figures. On the Devil, the Vampire, the Werewolf, the Wizard, and the Golem in Professeur Bell and Le Bestiaire Amoureux
1. "Everything is more complicated in Jerusalem:" Religion and the Devil in Les Poupées de Jérusalem
2. From the Bestiary to the Bestiaire Amoureux: a New Take on Fantastique Creatures
Klezmer V, or the Impossible Conclusion
An Interview with Joann Sfar: "I am not currently working on any comics, for the first time in 20 years."
Notes
Works Cited
Gallery with Color Figures