Carnivalesque humour in Ça, c’est Filarmo, Nic
Carnivalesque humour in Ça, c’est Filarmo, Nic

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the humour in Hermann Huppen and Morphée’s series of comic books about a boy called Nick, with primary focus on the third issue, Ça, c’est Filarmo, Nic [That’s Filarmo, Nick]. Drawing on Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, the article identifies a variety of humorous devices, including wordplay, puns, quotations, unusual transformations, and mésalliances. Special attention is paid to the visual level of the comic book. Humour is located in visual metamorphoses, invisible “phantom” panels, and the incongruity between words and images. The article also addresses the comic book’s intertextual ties with Little Nemo in Slumberland, a series of comic strips from the early 20th century, and compares the way authority is represented and challenged in the two texts. The impossible spaces that Nick traverses within the chronotope of the road are examined as places that invert the usual hierarchies and relations, allowing Nick to experience a level of agency usually reserved for adults. The end of Nick’s travels across the dreamscape is examined as both a departure and continuation of the pattern from Little Nemo, and as a logical conclusion of a temporary carnivalesque subversion of traditional structures that dominate the adult world.

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