Benoît Peeters, visiting professor at the Collège de France and holder of the Artistic Creation Chair, will givea lecture entitled " Métamorphoses de la bande dessinée " on Saturday 18 January 2025 at 11 am.
The lecture will take place at the Marguerite Yourcenar media library, 41 rue d'Alleray, Paris 15e.
Over the past thirty years or so, the comics landscape has undergone a profound transformation, in at least three directions. Firstly, the feminization of both artists and audiences: a worldwide phenomenon that has opened up new avenues for the "ninth art". Secondly, literarization: the not unambiguous term "graphic novel" underlines the growing narrative ambition of comics, and their ability to deal with all kinds of themes, from autobiography to essay to reportage, in a wide variety of styles. Aestheticization, finally, means that comics are now perceived as an art form in their own right; hence the importance of galleries, the inclusion of comics in major museums, and the entry of several authors into major institutions.
Benoît Peeters will evoke these developments with a wealth of images.
Benoît Peeters was born in 1956. After graduating in philosophy, he studied at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes under Roland Barthes. He presented a lecture entitled "Poétique de la bande dessinée" at the Collège de France in 2022-2023. Author of novels, essays and documentaries, Benoît Peeters is a recognized specialist in comics, and the biographer of such diverse figures as Hergé, Derrida, Valéry, Robbe-Grillet and Ferenczi. His long association with François Schuiten led to the creation of the celebrated Les Cités obscures comic book series, which has won numerous awards and been translated worldwide.
These lectures, aimed at the general public, reflect the wide range of disciplines represented at the Collège de France: history, economics, sociology, literature, biology, chemistry, mathematics and evolutionary science are all involved.
With this new event, the libraries of the City of Paris are fulfilling their mission of disseminating knowledge and combating misinformation by offering the public opportunities to decipher and explore certain areas of knowledge in greater depth. The aim is also to open a window on the world of research and how it works, and to bring Parisians closer to an exceptional institution, the Collège de France, which has been at the heart of the city's intellectual and scientific life for five centuries.
