Whither the Moomin Valley - sense of place in the Moomin comic strips by Tove Jansson

Foredrag af Rikke Cortsen.

Abstract

How is a sense of place constructed in only four small panels?

In much recent theory on space and place it is emphasised just how complex and dynamic the concepts of space and place are. In what some call the “spatial turn”, the turn is exactly away from space as static, dead and fixed and towards a re-imagination of the places we inhabitas inherently complicated, alive and under construction (Massey 2012:13).  

But the newspaper strip is a format in comics that is constricted in space and as such offers very few opportunities to expand on the way place is presented. This presentation analyses how Tove Jansson constructs the imaginary place that is the Moomin Valley as well as actual places through a sophisticated use of the newspaper strip. By foregrounding space as a way to analyse narrative such as suggested by Marie Laure Ryan(n.d.) this presentation will analyse how specific structural, stylistic and visual aspects of the strips constructs various spaces in the stories.

As Juhani Tolvanen has noted (2000:97–98), Tove Jansson uses the gap between panels in innovative ways and this presentation examines how this blurs the line between the space that is being represented and the space of the medium itself (Ryan 2012). In an inquiry focused on spatial aspects of the strips, it is explored how the use of text and image, panel divisions, style and perspective help shape the sense of place in the world of Moomin.    

Works Cited
Massey, Doreen. 2012. For space. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2012. Space, Place and Story. In Medienkonvergenz - Transdisziplinär. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. http://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110262094/9783110262094.109/9783110262094.109.xml, accessed August 11, 2014.

---. N.d. Space. In The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/space, accessed August 11, 2014.

Tolvanen, Juhani  2000. Vid min svans!: Tove och Lars Janssons tecknade muminserie. [Esbo]: Schildt.