Comics - new paper (Aren't I supposed to be on Spring Break?)

Spring break started for me today as I have no classes on Fridays. I have much research to do and since research is normally referred to as "work" I decided to spend my first day of spring break relaxing. I was watching tv and soon became bored. (tv really cannot hold my attention for very long.) My mind started floating to one of my research papers, one that I am particularly interested in.

This paper is for my senior seminar class on graphic novels. I am supposed to engage myself in Hillary Chute's "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative." The first time I read this article I found it very tedious, and I had to ask my boyfriend to read it with me just so I could summarize the main points of the article.  After a few months of studying and reading graphic novels (or narratives) and reading this article for the umpteenth time, I'm really starting to get a grasp on everything that Chute approaches. I'm even making little notations in the margins of other interesting topics within the article to look into and see what other critics are saying about it. (Like the difference between a graphic novel and a graphic narrative, for example.)

One of the topics Chute addresses in this article is the history of comics, and how comics represent history. Scott McCloud goes into more detail than Chute does about the history of comics in his book "Understanding Comics." I will use information from both Chute and McCloud, as well as other articles that I can find, to look into this. I do not want to summarize the history of comics but I want to focus on "Medieval comics."

I know that some medieval works have illustrations with the text (probably because a lot of people were illiterate). The Book of Kells, for example is a copy of the bible with pictures illustrating the stories within the text. The story can be told through the pictures alone, or one can read the text. Medieval musical manuscripts also have pictures. Some  of the manuscripts have the musical scores, poetry, and pictures to tell a story. I'm going to look around and see what other medieval works I can find that include pictures with the text. Who would have thought that comics existed in the Middle Ages?

I have to connect my thesis to the texts we have been reading in class, which is going to be tough. I have not figured out how I will link it, but I'm going to use Kyle Baker's "Nat Turner" as a bridge. "Nat Turner" is a story about slave rebellion. Baker draws the story with pictures, but uses text from the historical documentation of Nat Turner's confessions, which was dictated by Nat Turner when he was in prison.

I've come across another problem. If I am focusing on historical texts, that means I'm treating the Book of Kells as a historical text. Also, that means that I cannot use fictional texts written by Medieval writers that would have been illustrated. I need to come up with a way to either make it universal so I can include fictional works, or find more non-fictional texts from the Middle Ages that I can use within the umbrella of "comics" or "graphic novels."

I have much work ahead of me, and plenty of time to do it; however, I am spending my "relaxing day" doing research. Maybe research is what I consider a fun, relaxing activity. 8-)