French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Glaude, La Bande dialoguée. Une histoire des dialogues de bande dessinée (1830-1960)
Art and Visual Culture
La Bande dialoguée
Une histoire des dialogues de bande dessinée (1830-1960)
Benoît Glaude
26€ |
ICONOTEXTES |
392 PAGES
Tours, P.U. François Rabelais, March 2019
The speech bubble is often seen as the emblem of comics. Yet for nearly two centuries, creators have experimented with a wide variety of techniques to render character dialogue. How can we tell that Blake and Mortimer, or Spirou and Fantasio, are conversing? The visual dimension of the medium is frequently enough—even without reported speech—to signal a verbal interaction. Dialogue is just as characteristic of silent comics as it is of illustrated stories with captions.
This essay reconsiders comics as a fundamentally dialogic medium, exploring two closely intertwined questions. First, how can we analyze verbal interactions in a visual medium while accounting for its multiple dimensions, such as drawn bodies, written lines, speech bubbles, and more? The study focuses primarily on the Franco-Belgian "golden age," spanning from the launch of the magazine Spirou (1938) to the founding of Pilote (1959).
To avoid artificially freezing an artistic medium that has constantly redefined itself, the second question broadens the chronological scope. How were the dialogue conventions established by the Franco-Belgian comics tradition shaped from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century? How did the speech bubble, for instance, become the defining symbol of the medium? What impact did contact with other media (sound, visual, audiovisual) have on French-language comics?
Through close readings of various works, the book outlines a history of verbal interactions from Töpffer to Franquin.
By analyzing interacting voices and bodies, this fresh perspective on the history of a medium devoid of acoustic properties ultimately contributes to a broader history of sonic modernity.
The study of comics as a hybrid medium involves examining the complex interplay between visual and verbal elements. Scholars in media studies and narratology have long investigated how graphic narratives construct meaning through spatial arrangement, panel transitions, and lettering. Within this broader critical framework, the analysis of dialogue extends beyond simple speech representation to encompass the visual embodiment of voice, gesture, and interaction on the printed page. By considering the interplay of drawn bodies and written text, such research engages with longstanding discussions concerning the formal properties of graphic storytelling and its distinct modes of expression.
Readers interested in the history of graphic narratives or the evolution of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition may find this work a relevant contribution to the field. The text examines how nineteenth- and twentieth-century creators experimented with verbal interactions before the standardization of contemporary conventions. Through close readings spanning from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the book traces the development of dialogue techniques across various works and magazines, situating these formal developments within the broader context of modern visual culture.