Cover image for
Title:
Ethics in the gutter : empathy and historical fiction in comics / Kate Polak.
Author:
Polak, Kate (Assistant professor of English), author.
Publication Information:
Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2017]

©2017
Call Number:
PN6710 .P65 2017
Abstract:
Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics explores an often-overlooked genre of graphic narratives: those that fictionalize historical realities. While autographics, particularly those that place the memoirist in the context of larger cultural conversations, have been the objects of sustained study, fictional graphic narratives that - as Linda Hutcheon has put it - both "enshrine and question" history are also an important area of study. By bringing narratology and psychological theory to bear on a range of graphic narratives, Kate Polak seeks to question how the form utilizes point of view and the gutter as ethical tools that shape the reader's empathetic reactions to the content. This book's most important questions surround how we receive and interpret representations of history, considering the ways in which what we think we know about historical atrocities can be at odds with the convoluted circumstances surrounding violence. Beginning with a new look at "Watchmen," and including examinations of such popular series as "Scalped" and "Hellblazer" as well as "Bayou" and "Deogratias," the book questions how graphic narratives create an alternative route by which to understand large-scale violence. Ethics in the Gutter explores how graphic narrative representations of violence can teach readers about the possibilities and limitations of empathy and ethics.
ISBN:
9780814213537

9780814254455
Series:
Studies in comics and cartoons

Studies in comics and cartoons.
Physical Description:
xiii, 238 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Contents:
Being a dog: transformation, focalization, and memory in Deogratias -- Just like Sally: rape and reflexivity in Watchmen -- "We're still here": authenticity and memory in Scalped -- My children will remember all of the things I tried to forget: Bayou and intergenerational trauma -- Telling the wound: framing and restricted narration in Hellblazer -- Conclusion: (The) moving past.
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