Construction and Reconstruction of Childhood in the Graphic Novel Weites Land by Catherine Meurisse (2019) with Particular Attention to Point of View, Focalization and Perspective Theories
Ksenia KuzminykhThe literature addressing children and young adults has constructed diverse notions of childhood and youth. This pattern holds true within the medium of comics or graphic novels, particularly when stories revolve around characters with a childlike or adolescent nature. This article delves into the sociocultural perceptions of childhood and youth in multimedia graphic novels. These perceptions will be subjected to a meta-level analysis. The inquiry revolves around how these concepts of childhood and youth have been portrayed and how they should be interpreted. Specifically, these notions intersect with inquiries into how characters can be understood as children and adolescents, given the familial and societal expectations placed upon this demographic and including pedagogical attitudes. The concept of focalization can be inferred to prove insightful for analyzing the underlying conceptualization of childhood in graphic novels. The initial phase of the study discusses various theoretical concepts regarding perspective by encompassing both textual and visual models of perspective. The study subsequently examines discrepancies and commonalities in the parametric arrangement of textual and visual perspective. Moreover, the article emphasizes the mechanisms that guide the reader’s attention. These aspects constitute the focal point of the article and will be elucidated upon by analyzing the award-winning graphic novel Weites Land by Catherine Meurisse (2019) and employing the close reading methodology.
Konstruktion und Rekonstruktion der Kindheit in der Graphic Novel Weites Land von Catherine Meurisse (2019) unter einer besonderen Berücksichtigung der Theorien des point of view, der Fokalisierung und der Perspektive
Ksenia KuzminykhLiteratur über Kinder und Jugendliche konstruiert unterschiedliche Konzeptionen von Kindheit und Jugend. Im Medium Comic beziehungsweise Graphic Novel ist dies nicht anders, besonders dann, wenn im Zentrum von Narrationen kindliche oder jugendliche Figuren stehen. Die Kindheit und Jugend avanciert in diesem Fall zu einem soziokulturellen Konstrukt und kann dementsprechend auf einer Metaebene analysiert werden. Es stellt sich die Frage, wie diese Kindheits- und Jugendkonzepte repräsentiert werden und zu interpretieren sind. Konkret tangieren diese die Fragen nach der Interpretierbarkeit der Figuren als Kinder und Jugendliche mit den an diese Gruppe herangetragenen familialen und sozialen Erwartungen inklusive einer pädagogischen Attitüde. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass für die Analyse der Kindheitskonzeption, die der plurimedialen Graphic Novel zu Grunde liegt, das Konzept der Fokalisation aufschlussreich ist. Im ersten Schritt werden unterschiedliche theoretische Konzepte der Perspektivierung und des „point of view“ diskutiert. Dabei geht es sowohl um die textuellen als auch um die visuellen Modelle der Fokalisation. In einem weiteren Schritt werden Divergenzen und Konvergenzen beim Arrangement von textuellen und visuellen Perspektivenparametern eruiert. DesWeiteren wird einAugenmerk auf die Mechanismen der Leserlenkung gerichtet. Diese Aspekte stehen im Fokus des Beitrags und sollen anhand der preisgekrönten Graphic Novel Weites Land von Catherine Meurisse (2019) untersuchtwerden. Als Methode wird das „close reading“ Verfahren verwendet.
The literature addressing children and young adults has constructed diverse notions regarding childhood and youth, and this pattern holds true within the medium of comics or graphic novels, particularly when stories revolve around characters with childlike or adolescent characteristics. This article focuses on the sociocultural conceptualizations of childhood and youth in a plurimedial graphic novel and analyzes these conceptions at a meta-level. The questions arise as to how these concepts of childhood and youth have been represented and how they should be interpreted. Specifically, these concepts are tangent to the questions of how characters can be interpreted as children and adolescents when considering with a pedagogical attitude the familial and social expectations placed upon this group.
One can assume the concept of focalization to be insightful for analyzing the conceptualization of childhood underlying the graphic novel. For this reason, the study examines the divergences and convergences in the parametric arrangement of textual and visual perspective. Furthermore, the article pays attention to the mechanisms that guide the reader’s attention. The article focuses on these aspects and explores them through the award-winning graphic novel Weites Land by Catherine Meurisse (2019) using the method of close reading. The following aspects are of interest in this context.
Firstly, this graphic novel was created two years after the graphic novel Die Leichtigkeit (Meurisse, 2017), in which the author processed the events of the attack on the editorial office of the critical and satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and attempted to keep the memory of this attack alive. The theme influenced the work’s artistic form, including thechoice of colors and panel design. Weites Land stands in stark contrast to this in every aspect. Catherine Meurisse artistically stages a locus amoenus, which can be culturally linked to children’s and youth literature. The autodiegetic narrator disappears into this apparent paradise as if through a door, escaping the dreariness of everyday life. At first glance, however, not only blissful simplicity but also idyllic images of harmonious coexistence with nature and provincial society prevail in the rural enclave. Not everything at this place of longing is straightforward and devoid of deficiencies. This corresponds to the central characteristics of Arcadia. Yet, this idyll becomes a strengthening tailwind. Its psychological impact holds interpretive significance, as will be demonstrated within the context of this article.
Secondly, the author reconstructs her own childhood. Subjectivity is inherent in autobiographical texts. It correlates with the desire to make one’s own life appear as a meaningful continuum and to stage oneself in a certain way. The concept that the autodiegetic narrator creates in her own memoirs allows the recipients to identify her as a nature-bound, cheerful, and adventurous child. This implies notions that are conveyed to children, including anthropomorphism, creativity, and playfulness. An important role is attributed to the parents of the character, who expose their children to themes such as ecology and environmental protection, alterity, responsible actions, self-determination, and art.
Certainly, the challenging question of how to address Meurisse’s (2019) graphic novel Weites Land arises. This question is more easily answered in the case of graphic novels such as those by Isabel Kreitz, who adapted the children’s novels by Erich Kästner (e.g., Der 35. Mai [2006], Pünktchen und Anton [2009], Emil und die Detektive [2012], and Das doppelte Lottchen [2016]), or the series Fünf Freunde as Béja and Emmanuel Nataël (2019–2023) illustrated based on the literary works of Enid Blyton. Nonetheless, an attempt is made to determine how to address the graphic novel Weites Land against the background of its construction. Intertextual references in the form of concretization and reconstructions of children’s literature seem particularly fruitful in this regard.
Catherine Meurisse’s (2019) graphic novel Weites Land interconnects the process of constructing the personal memories of childhood experiences with broader life narratives. These narratives are structured through models ofgenerations and family and are linked through an event chronology of the 20th century that have been out into perspective based on the narrator’s present. The conception of childhood is created through symbolic and iconic signs and have been particularly aided by perspective and its parameters such as language, space, time, ideology, and perception.
