Silke Horstkotte University of Warwick

s.horstkotte@warwick.ac.uk

Phenomenology of Style

Within narrative theory, style remains an underexplored concept. Comics narratology constitutes a noteable exception, with important recent contributions highlighting the role of style in world creation (Lefèvre 2010, 2011), in perspective building (Mikkonen 2013) and in drawing attention to the drawing hand of the artist (Gardner 2011). So far, however, this discussion has not produced a clear understanding of what is stylistic rather than formal about a comic book or graphic novel.

My paper proposes a phenomenologically inflected understanding of style that draws on the rich discussion about style in art history and visual studies. According to Heinrich Wölfflin’s classical study (1915), engaging with style clarifies the spectator’s relation to the visual world because it exposes us to different kinds of seeing. Style for Wölfflin is not something given but a kind of seeing the world. Dürer’s “linear” style and Rembrandt’s “pictorial” style constitute two world views with different interests in the world, but both give us a complete image of the visible. For Whitney Davis (2011), style is something that we need to learn to see. In a way, style is the opposite of represen-tation – it makes us think about the cause of an artifact (its maker) rather than its reference to the objects it depicts. These connections are made by us, they do not simply exist. Both style and representation are types of “aspect-seeing” or seeing-as. From a phenomenological point of view, this suggests that style is a volatile aspect residing in the interspace between the textured surface of an artwork, the different gazes directed at that artwork, and the way(s) in which these gazes have been encultured – including cultural ideas about authorship, subjectivity, and individuality.

Peer Meter’s “serial killer trilogy” (Gift, Haarmann, and Vasmers Bruder) provides fascinating material for investigating this interspace. Its three volumes, scripted by Meter but drawn by different artists, invite us to weigh the relation between representation, expressivity, experience, and resonance.

Although the subject matter of the novels is similar – three famous German serial killers between the 1850s and 1920s, their crimes and their capture – the mood and atmosphere that they create are quite distinct from each other. It is tempting to connect these distinctions with the individuality and aesthetics of the artists Barbara Yelin, Isabel Kreitz, and David von Bassewitz. Indeed, the stylistics tradition suggests such a connection.

But style in comics, especially in aesthetically sophisti-cated graphic novels, can also constitute a self-conscious reflection on ways of experiencing and of representing the world. Graphic novels are often “thinking” texts, contributing to phenomenology in their own right. For instance, the different styles in the serial killer trilogy are associated with the world in which each of the novels is set, with its characters and with their perceptions, judgments and world views. But the styles also reflect on the aesthetic and media culture of the period in which each of the novels is set.

Thinking about style in Meter’s trilogy can help to bridge the gulf between a phenomenologically oriented response theory seeking to account for readers’ experiences, and narratological analyses of the textual structures that give rise to that experience. A phenome-nological narratology takes us away from the preoc-cupation with individual agents and building blocks of narrative. Through close reading and detailed descrip-tion, it moves us towards an appreciation of how

aspects of a text work together to create the mood and atmosphere through which experiences inside the storyworld become available to us and through which we also form our own experience as a reaction.

Meter, P. and Barbara Yelin (2010). Gift. Berlin: Reprodukt. // and Isabel Kreitz (2010). Haarmann. Hamburg: Carlsen. // and David von Bassewitz (2014). Vasmers Bruder. Hamburg: Carlsen.

Davis, W. (2011). A General Theory of Visual Culture. Princeton: Princeton UP. Gardner, J. (2011). Storylines. SubStance 40(1): 53-69. Lefèvre, P. (2010). Narration in Comics. Image & Narrative 1(1) <www.imageandnarrative.be/narratology/pascallefevre.htm>. Lefèvre, P. (2011). Some Medium-Specific Qualities of Graphic Sequences. SubStance 40(1): 14-33. Mikkonen, K. (2013). Subjectivity and Style in Graphic Narratives. In From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative, ed. D. Stein and J.-N. Thon. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 101-123. Wölfflin, H. (1915). Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst. München: Bruckmann.

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