Le trait et la lettre. Apologie subjective du lettrage manuel

• Main Author: Laurent Gerbier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Paris XIII 2012-09-01
• Series: Comicalités
• Subjects: dessin; enluminure; imprimé; lettrage; livre; Moyen Âge
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/1202

How come the mechanical lettering that is used in comics, especially when they are translated, seems to be so poorly fit to the drawing ? To answer that question, we have to consider the drawing and the lettering in their basic unity. Looking for this unity through the drawers’ practice as well as through the encounters of letter and line in the medieval illuminated manuscripts, we will try to show that drawing and lettering in comics are both traces, contemporaneously related to the simple stroke of the hand. As handmade signs, letters and lines are literally vestiges of moves, in which lies the specific temporality of iconotexts. This subtle temporality, which defines the interdependence between text and images in comics, is ruined by a carelessly used mechanical lettering.