Reading Autobiographical Comics: A Framework for Educational Settings

Introduction

1 Reader-Response Criticism

1.1 Reading as a Journey

1.2 Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory

1.3 Frames

1.4 Iser's Model of Meaning-Making

1.5 The Overdetermination of Literary Texts

2 Transaction in Educational Settings

2.1 The Ease of Reading

2.2 The Teacher of Literature as a Facilitator

2.3 Reading in Stages

Stage 1: Framing

Stage 2: Reading

Stage 3: Think-Tank

Stage 4: Lockstep

Stage 5: Rereading

Stage 6: Conclusions

Stage 7: Closure

2.4 Learner Texts & Activities

3 Cognitive (Literary) Studies

3.1 The Return of the Reader

3.2 Mental Models

3.3 Emotions & Empathy

3.3.1 The Feeling of What Happens

3.3.2 Types of Reading-Related Feelings

3.3.3 Transportation

3.3.4 Empathy

3.4 Embodied Cognition & Enactivism

3.5 Conceptual Metaphors & Blending

3.5.1 Basic Principles

3.5.2 Metaphors

3.5.3 Metonymies

3.5.4 Blending

3.6 Blending & Literary Studies

4 Cognitive Approaches to Comics

4.1 Synopsis

4.2 Definitions

4.3 Cartooning

4.4 An Art of Tensions

4.4.1 Words vs. Images

4.4.2 Image vs. Series/Sequence

4.4.3 Sequence vs. Page

4.4.4 Experience vs. Object

4.5 A Cognitive Reading of Craig Thompson's Blankets (Chapter I)

5 Autobiographical Comics

5.1 The Conceptual Ambiguity of Autobiography

5.1.1 A Struggle with Definitions

5.1.2 A Brief History of Autographics

5.1.3 Autographical Challenges to Autobiographical Genre Theory

5.2 Life Writing & Blending

5.2.1 The Autobiographical Act as Blending

5.2.2 Developing Autobiographical Reasoning

5.2.3 Autobiographical Memory

5.2.4 Photographic Evidence

5.3 Authenticity & Emotional Truth

5.4 Autobiographical Selves

5.5 Embodiment & Enaction

5.6 Types of Autobiographical Comics

Conclusion

List of Illustrations

Bibliography

Markus Oppolzer is an associate professor of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) and English literary studies at the University of Salzburg, Austria. His main research areas are autobiographical comics, visual narrative media in the classroom and multiliteracies.