José-Luis Munuera’s Anti-Capitalist Graphic Novel as a Creative Response to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2024.47

Keywords:

Bartleby the Scrivener, Wall Street, graphic novel, comics and literature, adaptation studies

Abstract

Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853) is a short story that offers a multiplicity of readings not only because of the complexity of its main characters but also because of Melville’s imaginary of Wall Street. This paper examines how José-Luis Munuera represents these narrative elements in his graphic novel adaptation Bartleby, der Schreiber (2022). I argue that Munuera’s adaptation has its own textual identity and can be read as a creative, graphic response to Melville’s criticism of nineteenth-century Wall Street. Even though set in a similar period to the 1850s original version, Munuera’s authorial choices invite the reader to reflect on contemporary conceptions of work, duty, and agency in a capitalist present.

References

Bordwell, D. (2007, February 9). Walk the talk. Observations on film art. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/02/09/walk-the-talk/

Broderick, W. (2011). Bartleby. Allan Melville, and the Court of Chancery. Leviathan, 13(2), 55-60.

Bryant, J. (2013). Textual identity and adaptive revision: Editing adaptation as a fluid text. In J. Bruhn, A. Gjelsvik & E.F. Hanssen (Eds.). Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, (pp. 47–68). Bloomsbury Academic. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472543349.ch-003

Castronovo, R. (2014). Occupy Bartleby. J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2(2), 253-272. doi:10.1353/jnc.2014.0028

Delerm, P. (2022). Foreword. In J. L. Munuera. Bartleby, der Schreiber (p. 5). Splitter.

Deleuze, G. (1997). Essays Critical and Clinical. Univ of Minnesota Press.

Dilgen, R. (2012). The Original Occupy Wall Street: Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener". Radical Teacher, 93, 54-55. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/475013

Foley, B. (2000). From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville’s “Bartleby”. American Literature, 72(1), 87-116. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-72-1-87

Formica, S., & Sfodera, F. (2022). The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting paradigm shifts: An overview of current situation and future research directions. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 31(8), 899–907. https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2022.2136601

Jódar, A. (Host). (2021, June 04). Munuera: El Dibujante (No. 33). [Audio podcast episode]. In Rumbo a tu Vida. PodBean. https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-53uez-1054d30

Jonik, M. (2011). Murmurs, Stutters, Foreign Intonations: Melville’s Unreadables. Oxford Literary Review, 33(1), 21–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44030834

Kuebrich, D. (1996). Melville’s Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in “Bartleby.” The New England Quarterly, 69(3), 381–405. https://doi.org/10.2307/366781

Kukkonen, K. (2013a). Contemporary Comics Storytelling. University of Nebraska Press.

Kukkonen, K. (2013b). Studying Comics and Graphic Novels. Wiley-Blackwell.

Marcus, M. (1962). Melville’s Bartleby as a Psychological, Double. College English, 23(5), 365–368. https://doi.org/10.2307/373808

Melville, H., Davis, M. R., & Gilman, W. H. (1960). The letters of Herman Melville. Yale University Press.

Melville, H. (1987). “The piazza tales” and other prose pieces, 1839 – 1860 (H. Hayford, H. Parker, & G. T. Tanselle, Eds.). Northwestern University Press.

Munuera, J. L. (2022). Bartleby, der Schreiber. Splitter.

Pinchevski, A. (2011). Bartleby’s Autism: Wandering along Incommunicability. Cultural Critique, 78, 27–59. https://doi.org/10.5749/culturalcritique.78.2011.0027

Pinsker, S. (1975). “Bartleby the Scrivener”: Language as Wall. College Literature, 2(1), 17–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111055

Rosenblatt, L. (2008). The Limits of Pity in Bartleby and Moby Dick. Medical Humanities, 34(2), 59-63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2008.000620

Smith, H. F. (1965). Melville’s Master in Chancery and his Recalcitrant Clerk. American Quarterly, 17(4), 734–741. https://doi.org/10.2307/2711130

Thompson, G. (2000). “Dead Letters!... Dead Men?”: The Rhetoric of the Office in Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Journal of American Studies, 34(3), 395–411. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27556857

Vaughn, W. (1999). Moving from Privacy: “Bartleby” and Otherness. The Centennial Review, 43(3), 535–564. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23739990

Weiner, A. (1980). The Function of the Tragic Greek Chorus. Theatre Journal, 32(2), 205–212. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207113

Widmer, K. (1969). Melville’s Radical Resistance: The Method and Meaning of “Bartleby”. Studies in the Novel, 1(4), 444–458. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29531362

Downloads

Published

2024-10-17

How to Cite

José-Luis Munuera’s Anti-Capitalist Graphic Novel as a Creative Response to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”. (2024). Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 12(25), 119-133. https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2024.47