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A Renaissance for Comics Studies: Early English Prints and the Comics Canon

Date Published:

5 June, 2015

Abstract:

This paper argues that the term “comics” can and should be used to refer to prints from early modern England. We have ample reason to shift the starting date for comics to at least the seventeenth century, if not earlier, within the English-speaking world. The invention of print stimulated the creation, adoption, and codification of elements of the comics form. Print also changed the quantity and quality of social encounters with the comics form. Readings from “A true discourse. Declaring the damnable life and death of one Stubbe Peeter” and The Triumphs of God’s Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sinne of Murther demonstrate that scholars of the comics canon must turn their attention to the early modern English print.

 

 

June 2015: Evan Thomas is a PhD candidate in Early Modern English literature at the Ohio State University. His publications have appeared in Multicultural Comics and the journal Reformation. His forthcoming dissertation addresses printed image-texts from early modern England, including works related to Spenser, Shakespeare, Middleton, and Milton.

 

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 04/14/2020