Narrativas biográficas em quadrinhos : o caso Dotter of her father's eyes.

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the comics publication Dotter of her father’s eyes, by Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot, and its referential relationship with the literary work Finnegans wake, written by James Joyce. Amongst the many possibilities of outlining a parallel between comics and literature, we elected the biographic narratives as a point of intersection between these formats, utilizing, structurally, ideas about metabiography as developed by Sergio Vilas Boas. In the adaptation of this model of biographic construction we emphasize that the relationship between life and work is a reflexive relationship, allowing a closer relationship between biographer and the subject of the biography and narrows the boundaries between biography and autobiography. This is what is perceived in Dotter of her father’s eyes: when it mimics the narrative structure presented by Joyce, the comics proposes a referencial game, evidenced and reinforced by a sequential language - of imagery and textual nature – which is typical of comics. In this kind of biographical puzzle, lives and works are intertwined, mingled, seeking to make sense in a big picture. Thus, starting from an analysis of the elements that comprise the comics jargon – and conceptualized by Umberto Eco, Will Eisner, Scott McCloud and A. L. Cagnin – we seek to determine and exemplify the collaborative relationship between text and image - defined based on Roland Barthes’ studies – evidencing, in Dotter of her fathers eyes, the existance of a parallelism between the autobiography of Mary Talbot and the biography of Lucia Joyce, life stories deeply marked by the narrative force of James Joyce.