Q: What does Baetons (2001) mean by ‘monstration’, ‘graphiation’ and the ‘graphiateur'?
A: Okay this may look like something completely complicated but ill try to explain what Baeton means in its simplest form. According to Baetons (2001) graphiation is “the graphic and narrative enunciation of the comics.” And to understand that meaning you’ll have to know what the heck enunciation is, which, in the light of comics is “both narrative and visual.” The term graphiateur is closely related because it means “the agent responsible for it” so in other words whoever wrote and illustrated the graphiation. (Hope you all are with me…) Lastly Baetons calls monstration as “the several types of narration” that is used as storytelling in novels, film and playwright.
Reference
Baetons, J. (2001) Revealing Traces: a new theory of graphic enunciation. In Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Ed.). The Language of Comics: word and image, (pp. 145-155). Jackson: U P of Mississippi.
Kudos for taking on this question. I avoided it because of the maze of definitions they use. It's ironic that the comic book genre is one of the most accessible forms of communication yet in many ways its harder to define what comics are than it is to define what a novel is.
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