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Boekbijdrage - Hoofdstuk

The beginning of the twentieth century was witness to a booming – and lucrative – children’s press: for girls, the bourgeois and enormously successful La Semaine de Suzette with its iconic art nouveau masthead was launched by Henri Gautier in 1905, its cheaper and chief competitor, Fillette began in 1909 by the much vilified and successful Offenstadt press. For boy readers, the Offenstadt press proposed the garishly colorful L’Épatant (1908) and the more adventurous L’Intrépide (1910). While the First World War disrupted publishing rhythms, many magazines survived. Some new publications, such as the éditions Nilsson’s Les Trois Couleurs emerged and existed only during wartime (1914-1919), comprising exclusively of stories related to the ongoing war. Here, and elsewhere, the picture story and comics continued to occupy a privileged place. This chapter will focus on a selection of children’s periodicals published during the war to highlight the roles played by long-running comics characters such as Bécassine (La Semaine de Suzette) and Lili (Fillette) in accompanying their young readers through the war. The characters incarnate the balance – sometimes ignored, sometimes carefully maintained, depending on the publisher – between entertainment and education. In addition, the paratexts, ranging from letters to games and advertisements, are a rich source of insight into the interaction between consumerism and affect, the latter heightened, the former more constrained and targeted, during wartime.
Boek: The Edinburgh companion to First World War periodicals
Series: Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities
Pagina's: 95 - 112
ISBN:9781474494724
Jaar van publicatie:2023
Toegankelijkheid:Open