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Abstract:
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Abstract: The current work proposes a deeper analysis of the first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel (1999), a comic book series written by the British Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O?Neill, which narrates a story led by a heroes? team composed by literary characters from the 19th century. Based on the literary concepts of dialogism and intertextuality presented by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva respectively and Gérard Genette?s similar analytical categories, this study analyses how the authors elaborated a dense and complex ficcional universe where intertextual relations are not just a resource recurrently employed, but the proper leitmotiv of the literary work, impregnating it in all levels. Since the option elected for the comic books visual-verbal language and for the traditional superheroes genre, it has been analysed how the authors selected literary books from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century amongst popular adventure, horror, and science-fiction novels and, following that, how they redesigned selected characters and elements in order to integrate them in a coherent plot novel. It is found that the main characters explored are not merely juxtaposed except that they were hipertextualy redesigned, each one being constituted not only by other texts quotes but also in intertextual relation with the original literary works, promoting permanencies and ruptures settled by other intertextual relations with the superheroes comic books, and with specific social roles the authors criticize.
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