HISTORY AND TRAUMA IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL MAUS, BY ART SPIEGELMAN
HISTORY AND TRAUMA IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL MAUS, BY ART SPIEGELMAN

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, a visual depository of personal histories. The research is aimed at investigating the way in which the narrative layers are kept together by the multimodal expressiveness of comic strips. The concept of graphic novel is analyzed against the traditional label of comic book and the need for a new nomenclature of the genre is discussed together with the rise to fame of the novel Maus. Art Spiegelman uses zoomorphic characters to stand for real beings in his father’s story of the Holocaust. Placed at the meeting point between comic studies and fictional (auto)biography, the novel becomes a form of witnessing history, while, at the same time, challenging the authenticity of any memory. The paper also focuses on the way in which the traditional panel-to-panel comics form gives the reader the opportunity to contribute to the meaning production.

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