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An analysis by Irene Velentzas.
Gerard Genette defines transtextuality as “all that sets the text in relationship, whether obvious or concealed with other texts.” Transtextuality informs a text’s genre, structural frame, thematic concerns, and conventional expectations. In the original graphic novel medium, transtexutality creates specific connects of the book cover and surrounding elements prior to the first page of graphic narration. Scott Chantler’s Two Generals book cover significantly acts as “panel one” of the text, subverting the reader’s expectations of warfare genre in favour of the author’s self-reflexive recreation of his grandfather’s war diary. Transtextual elements create layers of symbolic complexity throughout the graphic, particularly through Theirry Gronesteen’s notion of arthrology. (continued below)
The author prefaces his role for the reader through the inclusion of such paratextual elements as the epigraphic poem which asks the author’s self-reflexive question: Can remembering bring someone back to life? While the content of Two Generals is a “true” story, it is also subject to the graphic medium’s affordances and the cartoonist’s interpretation – a notion the author reminds the reader of near the end of the text with the inclusion of the drawn photograph of the real photograph depicting the “two generals.” The author’s thematic considerations on remembrance and self-reflexivity are similarly infused into his use of the church icon throughout the text and the cover, or “panel one.” This paper examines the cartoonist’s holistic story creation through arthrologically connected iconography and transtextuality.
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