Tintin’s Cultures. Aiming for the centenary

Introduction

His eternal youth gives no hint of it, but in January 2029, Tintin will be a hundred years old. Hergé left behind a body of work whose impact remains remarkably alive today in comic-book culture and the collective imagination. Embodying the mystique of adventure, Tintin has become a major figure in contemporary mythology.

Gradually, from his very inception – through both borrowings from and contributions to other cartoonists – his influence on the evolution and renewal of the comic strip illustrates the narrative and aesthetic strength of Hergé’s project. Its interpretation is becoming increasingly prominent within the field of the humanities. Amidst a constant stream of new editions, reprints and translations, the cultural and media reception of *The Adventures of Tintin* extends far beyond the scholarly circles of Tintinology. Its scholars continue to explore its philosophical, political, social and aesthetic meanings through publications and academic conferences, which demonstrate the resounding success of the critical engagement with Hergé.

A popular icon like so many other figures from the literary or cinematic imagination, a character evoking nostalgia for the golden age of the comic strip, and the subject of an intense tradition of parody that illustrates its cultural vitality, Tintin is a familiar figure on city walls, in advertising, in the cinema, in the extreme commercialisation of merchandise, but also in many contemporary comics which intensify their critical or laudatory nods to Hergé’s body of work, whether to distance themselves from it or to align themselves with it.

Three years ahead of Tintin’s centenary, centred on Hergé’s body of work and viewed through the rigorous lens of its most recent exegesis, this international conference aims to explore the prominent place and significance that the work holds in the 21^st century as a visual construct of social imaginaries. The Cultures of Tintin : a contemporary approach to revisiting Hergé’s work, placing it in the context of its aesthetic uses, its socio-cultural reappropriations and its centrality within the world of comics.

Organising
Committee: Laurent Déom (ULille); Patrice Guérin (ADH); Jacques Langlois (ADH); Pierre Marlet (RTBF); Fabrice Preyat (ULB); Olivier Roche (ADH); Jean-Louis Tilleuil (UCLouvain / ULille)

Scientific
Committee: Philippe Delisle (ULyon); Laurent Déom (ULille); Jean Leclercq (UCLouvain/Collège Belgique); William Marx (Collège de France); Renaud Nattiez (author, Les Amis de Hergé); Benoît Peeters (scriptwriter, writer); Michel Porret (University of Geneva); Fabrice Preyat (ULB); Tomasz Swoboda (University of Gdańsk); Jean-Louis Tilleuil (UCLouvain / ULille).

Partners and support
: Collège Belgique of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium; Collège de France; FNRS Contact Group ‘Research on Text-Image Relations’; National Fund for Scientific Research/FNRS-FRS; INCAL Institute (UCLouvain); Centre for Literary and Theatre Studies (INCAL); University of Lille; ULB; Le Conservateur Corporate Foundation; City of Brussels/Visit Brussels; Les Amis de Hergé (non-profit organisation); Reading, Learning and Studying through Images and Text (non-profit organisation).