First Things First

Welcome to our class blog!

I'm using this inaugural post to help us get off on the right foot. If you're someone who is already familiar with blogs, livejournals, IRC, IM-ing and whatever assorted geeky nomenclature I can muster up, you're probably not even reading this anymore. Shame on you for skipping ahead.

If you are brand-spanking new to online discussion forums, the odds are pretty good that you're absolutely terrified right now. The internet--and blogs as a whole--have both angelic and devilish qualities about them. We'll inevitably experience both here, but with a little bit of luck and some nifty prep work, you'll be up and posting in no time flat.

Three caveats before I turn you loose:

1) Do your best to keep the conversation civil and on-track. Hundreds of electronic communities die painful deaths every day because the participants don't respect one another or don't have anything relevant/intelligent to say. We might have our fair share of arguments here, but they shouldn't take the form of ad hominem attacks. Believe me: there are plenty of places online to vent any vile, biogted/racist/sexist/zealotist epithets you can think of; this isn't one of them.

2) Always remember that this is a public space; anyone with a computer and internet connection will be able to view our discussions. Please do not post any private information (home addresses and/or telephone numbers, social security numbers, grades, etc.) that you wouldn't want in the hands of a total stranger. You also might consider posting any email addresses (that is, if you find it necessary to post them at all...) in "no spam" format (i.e., "tdodge_AT_pnca_DOT_edu") to minimize the amount of porn and discount drug ads that will inevitably end up in your inbox.

3) To receive full credit for participating here, make sure your comments show your name somewhere. That will help me keep track of who's participating.

That's it. Let's get things off to a good start.

Ready?

Go!

McCloud, take two

Now that we have our fingernails a little dirty with some historical and theoretical digging in McCloud's text, let's continue broadening this definition of "sequential art" proferred in Chapter One and the ideas of "closure" explained in Chapter Three. In particular, McCloud argues that comics demand a heightened interaction between Author and Reader in the creation of meaning. As we've already discussed in class, this interaction isn't exclusive to comics; it's merely more obvious in the graphical format of panels, gutters and sequences of images. We can often point to other texts---ones we might be more willing to call "literature"---that demand more from us as readers.

In your response this week, describe a text or work of art that has in some shape or form demanded your heightened participation as the reader or viewer of that text or work. In other words, choose something that you didn't just read, but that you actively helped create meaning. Pretty much anything is fair game here.

The Golden Haggadah and the Sherborne Missal

The British Library has an amazing online exhibition called Turning the Pages, in which they have used Macromedia Flash to turn scans of rarest manuscripts into virtual books. These are really quite extraordinary: you can flip through DaVinci's sketchbook, an 8th century Chinese scroll, and a sultan's personal copy of the Qur'an.

Their reproduction of The Golden Haggadah should be of particular interest to us. We were briefly talking about the history of illuminated manuscripts, and how narratives in religious texts were often illustrated. If you take a look at my screenshot here, you'll see that the narrative from the Old Testament's books of Exodus and Genesis have been depicted in serial, visual panels:


(click to enlarge)

In addition to The Golden Haggadah, you'll also find The Sherborne Missal. What I find most striking about this missal is not only its kinship to other medieval illuminated texts, but also its hypertextual quality.


(click to enlarge)

If you look closely at this screenshot, the left page's text is mostly a historical narrative, deftly illustrated in the same custom that middle ages religious texts were often depicted. But on the right we find lyrics and accompanying music for the "Ordinary of the Mass," one of the central rituals associated with Christian practices celebrating the Eucharist. Some of the figures depicted in the page's illustrated border are bishops and clergy of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary's at Sherborne (Dorset, England); if you had attended services at this church in the 15th century, it's very likely that your congregation's bishop appeared on this page, as an obvious visual cue to your role in the mass.

Reactions?

I urge you to visit this website for yourself, as my screengrabs truly don't do it justice. To take full advantage of the British Library's website, you'll need a sound-enabled computer with Shockwave installed (if you don't have it installed, the website will prompt you and allow you to download it for free). And, as is with most things on the internet these days, a high-speed connection is preferred.