Framing Experiments. Visual Narratives in Humorous and Satirical German Periodicals and American Newspaper Comic Strips around 1900

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This sub-project compares visual narratives in humorous and satirical German periodicals around 1900 with early American newspaper comic strips, which latter were heavily influenced by humorous European visual narratives, but also forged their own path. The overall criterion of comparison will emerge through an enquiry into framing strategies and effects. Here the notion of the 'frame' will be approached from a number of interlinked perspectives. The project will thus investigate various forms of framing, both within picture stories and with regard to the framing functions of peritexts and paratexts. In the examples of playful visual nar-ratives from humorous and satirical periodicals and of newspaper comic strips, framing operations are at work at various levels: frames separate individual images from one another and structure the visual narrative; frames are also important within images, particularly for speech bubbles and other textual elements; texts can fulfil a framing function in relation to images and vice versa. The peritexts in humorous periodicals and American newspaper comics serve to frame the presentation and reception of the picture stories. The same applies to paratextual elements and structures: humorous visual narratives and comic strips will be considered as elements within the relevant journalistic context; here their surrounding elements and the characteristics of the periodical in which they appear play a crucial role. In describing these ways in which frames serve to steer the reception of picture stories, the concept of flow is useful. One of the project's guiding hypotheses, however, is that even the production of picture stories is already shaped by certain frames - particularly those of the relevant publication format and the structures of public communication and their associated media. Both kinds of periodical picture story are to be examined with regard to their relation to time - both in the sense of their 'historical' references and their narrative temporal structure. Framing effects are also produced through the sequential and serial linking of individual stories to other stories, whether by means of recurring figures or through variations on plot patterns. Finally, the project will approach framing operations by way of the relations between picture stories first published in periodicals and the book format; here anthologies of American comic strips will be compared with practices of compiling visual narratives published in humorous periodicals. The project is particularly interested in playful forms of self-reference in humorous visual narratives and comic strips, particularly where these directly or indirectly relate to their own pub-lication context and the conditions which frame it.