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Sfar So Far

Identity, History, Fantasy, and Mimesis in Joann Sfar's Graphic Novels

Fabrice Leroy author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Leuven University Press

Published:11th Sep '14

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Sfar So Far cover

Includes an in-depth interview with French cartoonist Joann Sfar.
Sfar So Far is the first monograph in any language devoted to the graphic novels of Joann Sfar, an artist whose abundant and innovative work has profoundly marked the contemporary French comics scene. This essay examines how, over the past two decades, Sfar has constructed an idiosyncratic universe with its own thematic and stylistic recurrences: a playful drafting style, contrasting with the thoughtful introduction of historical, theological, and philosophical matters; a sophisticated use of literary, filmic, musical, and pictorial references; an exploration of his own Jewish heritage in the context of a multicultural, postcolonial French society; an affinity for magic realism, fairy tales, heroic fantasy, the fantastique, and science fiction, often filtered through irony or parody; and a predilection for romantic musings and an interest in unconventional love stories.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Ceci est indubitablement un très bon et très beau livre. Il est bon dans le sens o๠il est bien écrit, bien argumenté, bien structuré, et riche, mais aussi dans le sens o๠il est beau car il est présenté dans une édition de qualité sur papier glacé, avec de superbes reproductions de pages ou de cases, en noir et blanc dans le texte et en couleur en fin de volume.
Chris Reyns-Chikuma, Belphégor [En ligne], 13-1 | 2015, mis en ligne le 09 mai 2015, URL : http://belphegor.revues.org/544


Fabrice Leroy's book provides a powerful analysis of key comics by the important contemporary French cartoonist Joann Sfar, who is widely renowned today for his best- selling series Le chat du rabbin, translated
as
The Rabbi's Cat (Pantheon, 2005). [...] Sfar So Far is the very impressive second book in an exciting new series, “Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels,” edited by Hugo Frey. Leroy's monograph is a brilliant model of artistic and literary analysis of comics.
Mark McKinney, Miami University, Ohio, French Forum Spring/Fall 2015 Vol. 40, Nos. 2-;3


Leroy's interview of Sfar (in English) concludes this volume, which contains an appropriate number of illustrations, including several in color. Leroy has produced a consistently insightful work that is well-written and thoroughly documented, and that will be of interest to all scholars and readers of French bandes dessinées. Edward Ousselin, Western Washington University, French Review 89.4


'...en langue anglaise, la première monographie consacrée à cet auteur.'
« Analyses et Comptes rendus », Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger 2017/2 (Tome 142), p. 229-294. DOI: 10.3917/rphi.172.0229

* Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étrang

ISBN: 9789462700062

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 57g

304 pages