Wordless Novels

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“Wordless books” were stories from the early part of the twentieth century told in black and white woodcuts, imaginatively authored without any text. Although woodcut novels have their roots spreading back through the history of graphic arts, including block books and playing cards, it was not until the early part of the twentieth century that they were conceived and published. Despite its short-lived popularity, the woodcut novel had an important impact on the development of comic art, particularly contemporary graphic novels with a focus on adult themes.

The success of Lynd \7ard's first woodcut novel, Gods' Man, which sold over 20,000 copies in six printings over four years, waned with each of the following five wordless books that he published between 1930 and L937. After Madman's Drum (1930) and Wild Pilgrimage (1932), Ward completed two shorter "pictorial narratives,,, his preferred description for his wordless books, before publishing Vertigo in 1.937. l{is shorter works were Prelude to a Million Years (1933), which addressed the social and spiritual isolation and despair of an artist who lives for his art alone, and Song Without 'Words (1936), centering on a mother's haunting fears of bringing a child into a world that she envisions as being full of pain and suffering.

L’Approdo è una graphic novel appartenente alla categoria dei wordless-books, pensata e disegnata
dall’artista australiano Shaun Tan. Attraverso un percorso di analisi aperto a stimoli esterni alla semiotica, si
vorrebbe mostrare come la compenetrazione dell’analisi da parte di concetti e di elementi teorici differenti
può contribuire a mettere in mostra, sotto una luce diversa, aspetti costitutivi del testo analizzato che
altrimenti rischierebbero di passare inosservati o di perdere la propria potenza comunicativa.
La semiotica e la psicologia hanno già, nel tempo, intrapreso un dialogo che ruota attorno a nuclei di
competenza specifici la cui delimitazione costituisce un punto fondamentale per evitare la sovrapposizione
reciproca e la confusione metodologica. La riflessione che si vuole proporre qui evita di entrare nel merito
di valutazioni di ordine metodologico o eccessivamente teorico e prende direttamente le mosse dal testo
analizzato, il quale contiene già una riflessione intorno al linguaggio, al senso di appartenenza e
all’eccedenza di una realtà che si dà in forma di evento, alla quale è difficile attribuire un significato.
Attraverso l’esplorazione del testo e l’apertura a concetti come quelli lacaniani di Reale, di Altro e di
fantasia, si vorrebbe mostrare come una più sistematica e meno rigida apertura verso fonti e teorie non
canonicamente presenti nell’armamentario del semiologo può, non solo apportare grandi benefici a una
singola analisi, ma aprire nuovamente a riflessioni di ordine superiore, facendo dialogare, per esempio,
interpretazioni anche molto diverse di autori come Saussure. Il tutto sempre a partire dall’osservazione di
un testo e all’interno dei limiti delle assunzioni metodologiche che costituiscono la disciplina semiotica.
Si procederà dunque a segmentare il testo in modo da avere presente la sua struttura generale secondo lo
schema narrativo canonico. Saranno poi presi in considerazione gli elementi critici che forniscono validi
spunti per un collegamento e una riflessione attorno ad altri due elementi che spesso sono oggetto di
discussione a livello teorico:
- Il rapporto della semiotica con la molteplicità non segmentata del Reale.
- La presenza e la rappresentazione dell’istanza soggettiva.

Haven rgB5. ROW'L"ANDSON Rowlandson Cies of London. A series ol B plates, each plate marked, Cries of London. Nos r B Rorulandson Delin. Merke Sculp. London published rTgg at R. Ackermann's, ror Strand. There are later issues of Print QuarterlY OffPrint Volume 20, No.l Marchr 2003 6r 'ing watermarks 18o6 and 1816. tes t9o4; republished r8rr. Street Cries, t9to. Charactzrisfic Sketches qlfthe Loner Orders, intended as a clmpaniln. to the Neru Picture of London: consisting of Ffry-four plates, neatj nloured lrule) London: Printedfor Samuel Leigh, tB Strand, r9zo Prbe 7s. half bound fizo. J. Grego, Rorul,andson the Caricaturit, London rBBo. A. W Ttrer, OLd London Street Cries and the Cries oJ T6-dal,London fi85. B. Falk, Thomas Rowlandson His Lfe and Art: A D o cumentarl Re c ord, London t g4g. R. V Tooley, English Books ruith Colaured Pkttes rTgo to r86o, London r954.

BIBLIOGRAPIIY 43 Polirical Cartoon Collections: Part 2 compiled by Richard Samuel \7est 42 CONTRIBUTORS Cover by Jeff Smith OHIO JOINT PROGRAM IN TI{E ARTS AND HUMANITIES M 695 Bryde. Road' Columbus, Ohio 43205 . ft lephone (614) 461-1 132 I1VI(S'Wins Ozzie Awards Ohio State Universiry Press has recently been informed that Inks: Cartoon and Comic Art Studies has won two gold Ozzie awards: one the category of best cover, educational, and the other for best design, new scholarly educational journal. Congratulations to Bill \Tatterson who created the cover and to Dean Kette and Gene Hite of Design Communications, Inc L,I 1\. /) tt( t W ffi L

celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the publication of will Eisner's A Contract with God and other Tenement stories (197s) it is appropriate to recognize the graphic novel and the historical threads to the wordless novels that were published in the 1930's. will Eisner indicates that the Belgian Frans Masereel, the German otto Niickel and the American Lynd ward were pioneers who "established an historical precedent for modern graphic storytelling." (Eisner, 1995:1) Examination of the theme of sexuality in works by these pioneers and Eisner's I contract with God display the evolution that these books share in bringing adult themes into the graphic novel market in the United States. Each book that Masereel referred to as "novels without words,, and that ward preferred to call "pictorial narratives" drew its theme from the social injustices of the time and reflected the rapidly growing appeal of pictures, not only in the newspapers but in the silent cinema. wordless novels were printed in black and white and published in book form. The close relationship between the silent films and wordless novels at frst glance seemed obvious. on closer examination, the inter-dependency of words, pictures, and music existed in fihn from the beginning. Except for a few experimental films, silent filrns were never silent. what wis appmint was that the narrative in a movie demanded little involvement on the pa.t or *re audience. The pictures in wordless novels, in contrast, encapsulated the essential frames of a silent movie and carried the total weight of the narrative.

After the publication of Lynd 'S7ard's third woodcut novel, Wild Pilgrimage (1932), he completed two shorter "pictorial n41141ivss"his preferred description of his graphic novels. These shorter works were Prelude to a Million Years (1.933), which addressed the social and spiritual isolation of an artist, and Song Witbowt Words (1,936), which centered on a mother's haunting fears of bringing a child into a hopeless world. These two works display Ward's remarkable skill as a wood engraver whose precise lines, intricate detail, and astonishing

iva Castleman points out in the publication acdrflpanying the L995 New York Museum of Modern Art exhibit, A Century of Anists Books, that artists throughout history have recognized that pictures can tell a story without words.l A unique form of storytelling without words that falls within this structure was called the woodcut novel, or the "novel in pictures." The woodcut novel was first developed by the Belgian Frans Masereel and the American Lynd \Vard in the early years of the twentieth century. In addition to Masereel, \Vard, and the handful of other male artists who experimented with this form was the Czechoslovakian Helena Bochor6kovl, who explored the life of a middle class family in Cbild-bood; a cycle of woodcuts (1931). Three contemporary women artists who have successfully presented narratives in linocuts within the structure of the wordless book include Each of these artists uses the format of the book to present wordless narratives, the visual literature recognized today as artists' books.

Alcuni dei caratteri grafici del graphic novel The Arrival di Shaun Tan (2006), appartenente al sotto-genere del silent (o wordless) book, vengono confrontati con una serie di esempi, tratti da fumetti disparati, di codici linguistici indecifrabili presenti nella nuvoletta.

In the process of providing close readings of a number of silent comics, this article considers the difference between drawn images and photographic images as vehicles for narrative, traces a number of the ways in which photos are remediated in comics, and suggests various narrative functions for which photographs in wordless comics are used as stand-ins for text.

Résumé

Axé sur la lecture détaillée de plusieurs bandes dessinées muettes, cet article s’interroge sur la différence entre images dessinées et images photographiques en tant que support d’une narration. Il discute aussi certaines formes de remédiatisation de la photographie au sein de la bande dessinée. Enfin, il présente plusieurs fonctions narratives que la photographie peut assumer quand elle se substitue au texte dans une bande dessinée muette.

Fremok 24 pages, $10 ISBN:2911842723 ike the first time I listened to Henryk Gdrecki's heartfelt Syzphony No. j, the mesmerizing graphic novel Cjrues has haunted me since itwas first published by Freon in 1997 -an eerie, wordless tale printed in two colors. (Freon merged with Amok in zooz and formed the highly praised and innovative publishing firm called Fremok.)

Early in the twentieth century, a distinct form of storytelling evolved from the woodcut, referred to as the woodcut novel. These wordless books were highly imaginative and realistic stories for adults told in black-and-white pictures that focused largely on social concerns in a growing industrial culture. During the same time, a number of wordless books and comic strips took a lighter look at the human condition like Otto Soglow (The Little King), Carl Anderson (Henry) and the Danish cartoonist Henning Dahl Mikkelsen (Ferd’nand).  I will discuss these and other examples of the humorous wordless comic with a focus on the common attributes of a wordless strip including identifying characteristics of the central character, use of stereotypes,  the minimum amount of detail or visual omission,  effective use of white space, utilizing picture balloons and textual messages displayed on signs, and the strip’s succinctness.

Examples of the international wordless books discussed include Adamson by Oscar Jacobsson,  a Swedish cartoonist who created the strip in 1920 for the publication Söndags-Nisse and based on the antics of a cigar-smoking, short man wearing a big hat and known as “Silent Sam,” in the United States; He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It — No Music, Too (1930) by Milt Gross, which was a lampoon on the serious themes in Ward’s woodcut novels; Vater und Sohn (1936) by the German e.o. plauen  published from his wordless gag strips that displayed the humorous and sometimes heartfelt relationship between a father and his son; Eve (1943) by Myron Waldman that told the story of a frumpy young woman who fantasizes about falling in love with a handsome movie star; The Strange World of Mr. Mum by Irving Phillips, which was both a one panel cartoon and a comic strip published in the United States in the late 1950s that inserted fanciful and sometimes dreamlike images and events into the real world; Skitzy (1955) by Don Freeman, which related the dual nature of a business man and his artistic counterpart; Kuri-chan by the Japanese artist Susumu Nemoto, which was a yonkoma manga or a four paneled comic strip that centered on a Japanese boy with “curly” (kuri) hair  who grew up in a middle class family and was modeled after Nemoto’s oldest son;  Boy and Girl by the Englishman John Rouson, who drew two daily comic strips for the London Daily Chronicle including early versions of his first pantomime strip, Little Sport;  Nipper and later Doug Wright’s Family by the Canadian Doug Wright, that chronicles the brash antics of Nipper, a boy full of mischief; and the famous wordless gag strip Spy vs Spy from MAD Magazine, first appearing in the January, 1961 issue of MAD and drawn by the Cuban born artist, Antonio Prohias and later by Peter Kuper.

My discussion from this variety of examples demonstrates the effective exchange of the narrator and audience—regardless of language or literacy—in communicating humor, play, and identity in the genre of the wordless comic.

In the process of providing close readings of a number of silent comics, this article considers the difference between drawn images and photographic images as vehicles for narrative, traces a number of the ways in which photos are remediated in comics, and suggests various narrative functions for which photographs in wordless comics are used as stand-ins for text. Resume Axe sur la lecture detaillee de plusieurs bandes dessinees muettes, cet article s’interroge sur la difference entre images dessinees et images photographiques en tant que support d’une narration. Il discute aussi certaines formes de remediatisation de la photographie au sein de la bande dessinee. Enfin, il presente plusieurs fonctions narratives que la photographie peut assumer quand elle se substitue au texte dans une bande dessinee muette.

This dynamic panel discussion includes recognized authors, artists, and instructors, who promise to provide a visually stunning introduction to the history of adult wordless books from the early twentieth century to the contemporary wordless graphic novels. Elements of visual storytelling are examined as well as various controversial social issues associated with adult wordless books. Guidelines for using wordless books in English Literature curriculum will also be presented.