Visual Style and
Focalization Nancy Pedri Memorial University of Newfoundland [email protected]
A look at how visual style provides essential cues that express the way characters experience their world and their selves in that world. Examples from Asterios Polyp and Lint will help answer how visual style communicates fictional mental functioning.
Style is a sophisticated and, at
times, subtle narrative strategy
used to communicate seeing and
understanding (in short,
focalization), which, in turn, is
intrinsically linked to a fictional
agent’s way of being in the world.
Stylistic ruptures or
shifts in stylistic choices
are likely to reflect
changing visions of the
fictional world.
Visual style often accentuates
not only an embodied self, but
also a social, relational, or
entangled selfhood.
Things to think a bit more about:
1. To determine the narrative function of style – visual and verbal style – considerations of stylistic options and the impressions they give rise to need to extend beyond assessments of authorial voice to consider issues of focalization as well.
2. The study of style and its relation to focalization fosters a nuanced appreciation of how fictional worlds are conceptualized by narrators or characters, and what demands those conceptualizations place on readers.
3. The study of the logic, principles and practices of visual storytelling (visual
narratology) necessitates an approach that values, if not privileges a textual and textured sensibility (one that pays close attention to style not as a descriptive category of a graphic syntax, style or design, but as an effect of a narrative’s visual components) if it is to account both for how visual narratives tell stories and engage readers in their worlds.
Fischer, Craig and Charles Hatfield. “Teeth, Sticks, and Bricks: Calligraphy, Graphic Focalization, and
Narrative Braiding in Eddie Campbell’s Alec.” Graphic Narratives and Narrative Theory. Ed. Jared Gardner and David Herman. Spec. issue of SubStance 40.1 (2011): 70-‐93.
Lefèvre, Pascal. “Mise en scène and Framing: Visual Storytelling in Lone Wolf and Cub.” Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods. Ed. Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan. New York: Routledge, 2012. 71-‐83.
Meesters, Gert. “Les significations du style graphique: Mon fiston d’Olivier Schrauwen et Faire semblant c’est mentir de Dominique Goblet.” Textyles 36-‐37 (2010): 215-‐233.
Mikkonen, Kai. “Subjectivity and Style in Graphic Narrative.” From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narratives. Ed. Daniel Stein and Jan-‐Noël Thon. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2013. 101-‐123.
Palmer, Alan. Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004. Semino, Elena. “Mind Style Twenty-‐five Years On.” Style 41.2 (Summer 2007): 153-‐173.
Sources that can help us along: