Digital publication of the opening lecture by Pr Benoît Peeters

Benoît Peeters

A new art : comics

For decades, comics had neither a name nor a history. Associated with childhood and entertainment, they were published on ephemeral media and rarely saw the light of day in book form. Initially prized by collectors nostalgic for the joys of childhood, it gradually gained in readership, then prestige.

Benoît Peeters reconstructs the history of a long-discredited genre and analyzes the evolution of the discourse around it, giving us an insider's view of the processes that led to the recognition of the ninth art.

Peeters B., Un art neuf : la bande dessinée, Paris, Collège de France, coll. " Leçons inaugurales ",^no 313, 2023.

Benoît Peeters is a writer, scriptwriter and biographer of Hergé, Paul Valéry and Jacques Derrida. A theorist and critic, he is the author of numerous essays on comics, screenwriting and collaborative writing. With cartoonist François Schuiten, he created the Cités obscures cycle in 1983, which has been translated worldwide. He is a guest professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the annual Artistic creation chair in 2022-2023, with the support of the Centre national du livre.