Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 19
instructional profession helped him to realize the benefits of displaying information in
such combinations and anticipate how this style might appeal to readers. Although he
connected verbal and visual information to produce a narrative in Histoire de M. Vieux
Bois, other artists and authors had worked with blending these techniques many years
before Töpffer's work became popular.
Sequencing, especially, had been used deliberately as a device to instruct
audiences toward understanding a particular message. This consciously constructed
representation of chronology could be the most straightforward way to illustrate
connections between past events and their ensuing outcomes. Furthermore, by
documenting, analyzing, and representing a particular view point through the
construction of a graphic narrative, an artist could influence a viewer's perception of the
topics contained within his work. These intended educational aims for moral, and often
political, instruction manifested in works created long before Töpffer's.
Unlike McCloud, other historians like Robert C. Harvey, have pinpointed the
emergence of sequential narrative even earlier, with the work of the English painter
William Hogarth. Hogarth's moralistic series of six paintings titled, A Harlot's Progress,
was first exhibited in 1731; they illustrate, in sequential order, the plight of a girl who
becomes a prostitute and later dies of venereal disease (Harvey, Comedy 77). When the
title is considered with the bleak ending of the series, it becomes obvious to the viewer
that the piece is somewhat of a satiric social commentary. Each image is accompanied
with a textual caption that serves an explanatory function, providing a description of the
character Moll Hackabout and the location in which she is depicted. Captions are
generally used to demonstrate a character's thoughts or to function as a narrative device