This thesis investigates the reception and creation of post-1960 Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, through an examination of the key BD journals of the period, namely, Pilote (1959-1989), L'Echo des savanes (1972-present) and (A Suivre) (1978-1997). The BDs considered as representative of these magazines are not only contextualised socio-historically as cultural artefacts of the period, but are also analysed as texts. This thesis also considers the historical processes of the institutionalisation and intellectualisation of the BD in France and Belgium in a bid to understand the current cultural status and popularity of Franco-Belgian BD. In terms of reception, I focus mainly on the critical reception of BD. In terms of creation I focus particularly on the work of three authors, Claire Bretécher, Christian Binet and Benoît Peeters, concentrating on a personal aesthetic appreciation rather than a general public appreciation of their work. After a structural introduction to the thesis, I discuss certain significant aspects of pre-1960 BD history. In particular, I highlight the political suspicion in which children's illustrés were held in the immediate post-war period. I then suggest specific cultural and historical reasons, which explain BD's transition from frowned-upon illustrated children's material in the 1950s to its welcomed reception as a medium capable of meaningful adult commentary in the 1970s. This introductory chapter concludes with a summary of the key events marking BD's cultural institutionalisation in France and Belgium. This summary particularly emphasises the State intervention of the 1980s, which definitively recognised post-1960 BD as a national asset. In chapter one, I discuss the field of BD criticism, and investigate, in three sub-sections, the contents and context of the main critical trends such as they developed in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s-1990s. I argue that the decisive process of BD's intellectualisation was inaugurated with the establishment of the CBD (Club des Amis de la bande dessinée) in 1962.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:342056 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | McQuillan, Elizabeth Carmel |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8926/ |
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