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The Graphic Canon, Volume 1
Russ Kick
From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons
Seven Stories Press
June 2012
On Sale: May 22, 2012
501 pages ISBN: 1609803760 EAN: 9781609803766 Paperback
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Fiction Family Life | Fiction Classics
THE GRAPHIC CANON is a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind
trilogy that brings classic literature of the world together
with legendary graphic artists and illustrators. There are
more than 130 illustrators represented and 190 literary
works over three volumes—many newly commissioned, some hard
to find—reinterpreted here for readers and collectors of all
ages. Volume 1 takes us on a visual tour from the earliest
literature through the end of the 1700s. Along the way,
we're treated to eye-popping renditions of the human race's
greatest epics: Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey (in
watercolors by Gareth Hinds), The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The
Arabian Nights, plus later epics The Divine Comedy and The
Canterbury Tales (both by legendary illustrator and graphic
designer Seymour Chwast), Paradise Lost, and Le Morte
D'Arthur. Two of ancient Greece's greatest plays are
adapted—the tragedy Medea by Euripides and Tania Schrag’s
uninhibited rendering of the very bawdy comedy Lysistrata by
Aristophanes (the text of which is still censored in many
textbooks). Also included is Robert Crumb’s rarely-seen
adaptation of James Boswell’s London Journal, filled with
philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery. Religious literature is well-covered and well-illustrated,
with the Books of Daniel and Esther from the Old Testament,
Rick Geary’s awe-inspiring new rendition of the Book of
Revelation from the New Testament, the Tao te Ching, Rumi’s
Sufi poetry, Hinduism’s Mahabharata, and the Mayan holy book
Popol Vuh, illustrated by Roberta Gregory. The Eastern canon
gets its due, with The Tale of Genji (the world’s first
novel, done in full-page illustrations reminiscent of Aubrey
Beardsley), three poems from China’s golden age of
literature lovingly drawn by pioneering underground comics
artist Sharon Rudahl, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a
Japanese Noh play, and other works from Asia. Two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays (King Lear and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream) and two of his sonnets are here, as
are Plato’s Symposium, Gulliver’s Travels, Candide, A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Renaissance poetry of
love and desire, and Don Quixote visualized by the legendary
Will Eisner. Some unexpected twists in this volume include a Native
American folktale, an Incan play, Sappho’s poetic fragments,
bawdy essays by Benjamin Franklin, the love letters of
Abelard and Heloise, and the decadent French classic
Dangerous Liaisons, as illustrated by Molly
Crabapple.
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