Anthropo- and Zoomorphic Materializations of Emotions in Zerocalcare’s The Armadillo Prophecy

Abstract

The first part of the article is devoted to a brief introduction of the figure of the Italian cartoonist, who is little known to the Polish audience (we only have two translations of his comics, and this article is the first text in Polish about his work) and the context of the publication of his first full-length graphic novel – an example of auto-fiction. The main part of the article is an analysis of the depiction of emotions in The Armadillo Prophecy which, using deductive methods, aims to identify the techniques of imagery most frequently used by Zerocalcare, and to distinguish the categories of characters appearing in the text. The author uses an interesting procedure of physical emanation, introducing anthropo- and zoomorphic materializations of emotions accompanying the main character (author’s alter ego). The article ends with a conclusion, which aims to find points of contact between Zerocalcare's literary works and the modern science of emotions. The author concludes that in his comics Zerocalcare describes his own method of dealing with difficult situations that is the observation from the position of a spectator, how his automatic reaction clashes with the analytical sphere, which is presented in the form of a physical emanation (anthropomorphic and zoomorphic materializations of emotions).