Are We Reading Literature or Comics?

The Comic as a University Didactic Intervention on the Path to Multiliteracies

Abstract

This article shows how comics can be used in university seminars on literature to strengthen students’ competencies in relation to the so-called “multiliteracies”. This concept was developed by the New London Group (1996) and proposes a multimodal approach, while at the same time drawing attention to socio-political contexts and inter- or transcultural issues – and has often been reduced to a mere media perspective, especially in the field of literature didactics and comics. By contrast, I aim to take up the original concept of “multiliteracies” and – enhanced by Jens Schröter’s theory (2008) of the “primordial-intermedial network” – to use selected Czech comics to show how reading them can open up a new view of literary texts and, ultimately, of languages and cultures in their entirety.