Quadrinhos iluminados: William Blake nas obras de Alan Moore

Abstract

This investigates comic books by author Alan Moore (1953) in relation to William Blake’s illuminated, poetic and pictorial work (1757-1827) in the light of the Aesthetics of Reception and Comics Studies, these used as a dialogical tool and interpretive. For this, I use as a methodological instrument the studies of Aesthetics of Reception based on the ideas of Robert Jauss (1994). I also count on contributions from scholars and based on comic books, such as Thierry Groensteen (2007), Matthew Green (2003), Barbara Postema (2018), among others. As a prologue, I present the biographical path that led me to this thesis in the same genre that it seeks to investigate: comic books. I do this with the art of comic artist Otoniel Oliveira (2020) from the script of my authorship. The same is done in the epilogue, framing the critical text that constitutes this work whereby I check Alan Moore’s works in a chronological approaching, from his reading of the lite and work of William Blake. To this end, the corpus of analysis privileged four works by the contemporary author in his sequence of production and publication, beginning with V for Vendetta and his exchange of languages with the “preface to Jerusalem” (1804-1811), by William Blake. Then, I make an investigation of Watchmen (1986) in relation to the poem “The Tyger” (1794), verifying the technique of mirroring the images of the works “Milton the poem” (1811) and “Songs of Experience” (1794) for the comics. Then I examine From Hell (1989), realizing how Moore recreates William Blake’s own figure in biographical terms and as a character in the narrative, together with the painting “The ghost of a flea” (1819-20). Finally, in Promethea (1999), I analyze the re-creation of the character Urizen, present in several illuminated books by Blake and in the painting “The Ancient of Days” (1794), in addition to the presence of the author William Blake as a fictional character. In this critical and interpretive path, thus I analyze Moore’s own artistic formation process in relation to the work of one of his main influences and inspirations. After the epilogue, I follow with the bibliographic references and appendices, which include an investigative table of Blakean references present in Alan Moore’s work and an interview with the author carried out in Northampton, during the sandwich stage that made possible a good part of the reflections here. The present work was carried out with support from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - Brazil (CAPES), Novo ProDoutoral, Ordinance No. 140, of October 2, 2013.