It is possible for the reader to become at least as interested in the narrators' setting as in the stories that they recount. Joe Sacco and his friends are in present day Gaza when they are told about incidents in Gaza in 1956. (The "present" is the period of the Iraq War.) We need to know about the events researched by Sacco but we also appreciate his drawings of present day Iraq and its inhabitants. The pictures starkly depict social interactions, division, oppression and physical dereliction. We see an Israeli settlement in the distance but do not see inside it.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI have read Chaucer's THE CANTERBURY TALES, but not the other works you listed. There's also the THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, parts of which I've read in Sir Richard Burton's translation. And the FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, also read in part by me. I would also include Boccaccio's DECAMERON, also a collection of stories told by the characters in a framework (altho I've not read any of that collection).
I remember how funny some of Chaucer's stories were. Also, I could tell, here and there, how THE CANTERBURY TALES were collected by a Catholic at a time when England was Catholic. E.g., the anger Chaucer had for certain kinds of cussing involving God and the BVM echoes Catholic distaste for that kind of swearing.
Sean