Asterix University in the Missive

[Jochgem]

Of course we all love the news we read in the official and free Missive of the Origin of the Asterix Universe. But now in the latest edition, I frankly miss the point of the articles 'Asterix and Geopolitics' and 'Asterix on Jung's divan' issued by the Asterix University.
http://gb.asterix.com/missives/lettre66.html

But I must admit, English is not my mother language, and I may have problems with the complications of the language!

"Jochgem"

[Erik]

Hello Jochgem,

But now in the latest edition, I frankly miss the point of the articles 'Asterix and Geopolitics' and 'Asterix on Jung's divan' issued by the Asterix University.

well, I read the german translation of the missive and I didn't really understand what the deeper sense shall be, either.

In the first document they only state how successful the Asterix series is and they say that Asterix is ready for a globalized world.
In the second document they try to explain the reasons for Asterix' success...

But nothing of it is really new. And there's no real explanation what the "Gaulish Asterix Universitiy" is. In the first real article ("Behind the scenes with Marketingmix") the "Gaulish University" is explained to be a meeting of Asterix publishers and license holders from all over the world. But what has this to do with a "University" and why did they think about the reasons of Asterix' success just now? - For me it seems, Doubleclix simply needed something to fill up this missive as there are no real news in the Asterix universe right now. :???:

Regards
Erik

[Jochgem]

And there's no real explanation what the "Gaulish Asterix Universitiy" is. In the first real article ("Behind the scenes with Marketingmix") the "Gaulish University" is explained to be a meeting of Asterix publishers and license holders from all over the world.

Erik, indeed, the so-called Asterix University is a yearly meeting of publishers. Last year we had a report in the missive too: http://gb.asterix.com/missives/lettre52b.html Unfortunately the most important message we get is about the sales of the books: Portugal 111,000 copies, UK 80,000 copies. Like McDonalds University is about selling Hamburgers.

But we (= this forum) are the real Asterix University, where the comic is studied. I am glad to present an addition to our library. In the Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 37, Issue 1, January 2005, Pages 69-88, Charles Forceville (Department of Media Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam) reports his research "Visual representations of the idealized cognitive model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie". The abstract:

The conceptual metaphor program launched by Lakoff and Johnson [Metaphors We Live By, 1980] attempts to chart and describe the Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs) that govern human thinking. The manifestations of these models studied hitherto, however, are almost exclusively verbal ones. In the interest of enriching insights into ICMs, non-verbal and multimedial representations need be investigated as well. In turn, picture theory can benefit from instruments developed in the cognitive linguistics paradigm.
Kövecses [Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love, 1986; Metaphor and Emotion, 2000] has demonstrated that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. This paper investigates non-verbal manifestations of anger in the Asterix comics album La Zizanie in the light of Kövecses’ findings. It is argued that (i) the representations of anger found here are, at the least, compatible with the most dominant anger metaphor found by Kövecses, ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, and are probably motivated by it; and (ii) the medium of comics may privilege aspects of ICMs that are less dominant, or even absent, in its linguistic manifestations. Furthermore, the method of analysis employed is reflected on, since it is intended to be applicable beyond the questions addressed here.

Author Keywords: Anger; Idealized Cognitive Models; Asterix; Picture analysis; Images and cognition; Metaphor

Read how some persons in the comic are analysed: page-strip-panel.

Fig. 1. 8-2-1: Roman senator. Signs of anger: (1) bulging eyes; (2) wide mouth (emphasized by a red-colored tongue); (3) arm/hand position (iii) (“pointing”); (4) spirals; (5) bold face (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).
Fig. 3. 9-4-3: Roman sailor. Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes; (2) tightly closed mouth; (3) arm/hand position (ii) (“hands/arms close to the body”); (4) jagged line (La Zizanie).
Fig. 4. 17-4-1: Obelix (left) and Asterix (right). Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes (O.); (2) bulging eyes (A.); (3) wide mouth (both, A. with red tongue); (4) pink face (both); (5) ex-mouth (both); (6) bold face (both); (7) jagged line (both) (La Zizanie).

Jochgem (librarian of the Leiden Institute for Asterix Comic Studies)

[Sellix]

Broeva!!! Haro!!!

[Christine]

Dear Asterix Scholars,

Asterix is a wonderful caricature of our world and habits, seen by the keen eye of Goscinny, and I am also glad that researchers use it.
About the attitudes : do you know if Uderzo worked on the drawing alone, or if Goscinny gave precise specifications ? I am ready to give credit to Uderzo for the drawings. He is good at conveying 'anger' and so many other emotions.
Probably the very caricatural style of Uderzo makes it easier to give specific attitudes and convey emotions. In Tintin, for instance, the faces are very simple and less mobile. It does not prevent Captain Haddock (in French) to have also very nice fits of anger.
Thanks for this piece of news of the life of Asterix's work.

Christine

[Jochgem]

do you know if Uderzo worked on the drawing alone, or if Goscinny gave precise specifications ?

Christine,

Yes the style of Uderzo is great, the emotions, and all the little surprises we still can find after reading them over and over again. About the specification: Goscinny gave a rather precise description what should be seen in each panel. This means not only the text but also the layout must have been in his head. (A genious, this man) Of course Uderzo interpreted this in his own style. (A great artist, this man) You can see this (in French naturellement) on the Goscinny website.

http://www.goscinny.net/asterix/fr_method.htm (Découvrez la méthode Goscinny appliquée à la première planche d'Astérix le Gaulois.) Don't forget to click the link on that page: you see the scenario by RG, and the corresponding drawing of AU. Great!

"Jochgem"
PS. If you want a copy of this above-mentioned research article, I can arrange it for you.

[Christine]

Thanks for the reference !
I've just loaded the paper - although working in a very different field, our subscription to Elsevier includes access to the "Journal of Pragmatics".
I'll curious to know how much (or how little ??) I can grasp !

[Jochgem]

I'll curious to know how much (or how little ??) I can grasp !

At least the pictures are nice!

Now that you are a regular reader of the Journal of Pragmatics, try: How to do things with words and gestures in comics, by Ofer Fein and Asa Kasher, volume 26 (1996) pages 793-808.

In an attempt to explore the relationships between words and gestures in comics, the terms 'gesticulary', 'ingesticulatory' and 'pergesticulary act' are proposed and employed. A study is reported, in which frequent gestures from Asterix books were investigated. Ten gestures were used in the first part of the study together with their accompanied utterances in the comics, in order to examine the gesture-utterance connection.
In the second part of the study, 26 subjects were presented with those gestures, along with the corresponding photographed gestures. They were asked to propose utterances for the gestures and to ascribe possible meanings to them. We conclude from the results that the meaning of a gesture lies in the ingesticulary act, independently of the exact propositional content. We also argue that people have a firm comprehension of comics gestures, and that those gestures are understood to mean the same as similar 'real life' gestures.

"Jochgem"