Sfar So Far

Includes an in-depth interview with French cartoonist Joann Sfar.
Sfar So Far is the first monograph in any language devoted to the graphic novels of Joann Sfar, an artist whose abundant and innovative work has profoundly marked the contemporary French comics scene. This essay examines how, over the past two decades, Sfar has constructed an idiosyncratic universe with its own thematic and stylistic recurrences: a playful drafting style, contrasting with the thoughtful introduction of historical, theological, and philosophical matters; a sophisticated use of literary, filmic, musical, and pictorial references; an exploration of his own Jewish heritage in the context of a multicultural, postcolonial French society; an affinity for magic realism, fairy tales, heroic fantasy, the fantastique, and science fiction, often filtered through irony or parody; and a predilection for romantic musings and an interest in unconventional love stories.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

"Sfar So Far" was written by Fabrice Leroy.

Fabrice Leroy is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Yes, "Sfar So Far" is part of the "Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels" series. It's book 2 in the series.

All volumes will be published in English, but the comics and graphic novels under investigation will be of any European language and from any European culture. Like graphic novels and comics, Europe itself is hard to define, and the approach for the series will be open and not overly prescriptive.

Series editors

Jan Baetens, KU Leuven
Hugo Frey, University of Chichester
Maaheen Ahmed, Ghent University

Editorial Board

The editorial board is composed of leading scholars from literature, visual arts, and historical studies:
Bart Beaty (University of Calgary)
Christopher Pizzino (University of Georgia)
Ann Miller (University of Leicester).

Proposals

Proposals and enquiries can be sent to the series editors.
Please make use of the submission form to present your manuscript or proposal to our board.
Authors interested in Open Access can consult the available funding options.

Links & Resources

Contents

List of Illustrations 7
Acknowledgements 9

Introduction: Sfar so Far

Chapter One: Rewriting Jewishness. On Counter-Violence, Sexuality, and Humor in Pascin and Klezmer
1. French Anti-Semitism in the Twenty-First Century: New and Old Trends
2. A New Sephardic Consciousness
3. On Two Narrative Prototypes of Jewishness in Pascin
4. Variations on Guilt, Transgression, and Violence in Klezmer

Chapter Two: Sfar's Historiographics. On the Representation of History and Memory in Les Carnets d'Odessa and La Comtesse Éponyme
1. Framing Odessa as a “Lieu de Mémoire:” Sfar's Carnet d'Odessa
2. Sfar's Ironic Take on the Enlightenment in Les Lumières de la France

Chapter Three: Painting Painters. On Mimesis, Meta-Representation, and Intertextuality in Pascin, Le Chat du Rabbin, and Chagall en Russie
1. Pascin: Image and Reality
2. Sfar Conjures Marc Chagall (Again): The Politics of Visual Representation in Le Chat du Rabbin
3. Painting the Painter: Meta-Representation and Magic Realism in Joann Sfar's Chagall en Russie

Chapter Four: Reinventing Fantastique Figures. On the Devil, the Vampire, the Werewolf, the Wizard, and the Golem in Professeur Bell and Le Bestiaire Amoureux
1. “Everything is more complicated in Jerusalem:” Religion and the Devil in Les Poupées de Jérusalem
2. From the Bestiary to the Bestiaire Amoureux: a New Take on Fantastique Creatures

Klezmer V, or the Impossible Conclusion
An Interview with Joann Sfar: “I am not currently working on any comics, for the first time in 20 years.”
Notes Works Cited
Gallery with Color Figures