The Visual Narrative Reader

"Not all narrative is textual. Images, sequential or non-sequential, have made meaning and told stories since the first cave art and through to the latest 3D movies. This book understands that analyzing this form of narrative is important and fundamental to a complete theory of discourse. Cohn's Visual Narrative Reader explores many forms of image-based narratives. It shows how meaning and sequence is produced and how to approach the discourse analysis involved. Contemporary research on the visual language of sequential images have been scattered across several disciplines: linguistics, psychology, anthropology, art education, and others. Only recently has this disparate research begun to be incorporated into a coherent discipline. This book collects classic and important papers from across disciplinary divides about the comprehension of sequential images, as well as introducing review chapters summarizing the literature from specific approaches to understanding visual narratives. The result is a comprehensive reader that can be used as a resource to researchers, a supplement to courses, and a broad overview of fascinating topics to anyone interested in this growing field studying the visual language of comics and visual narratives"--