Hybridized Popular Literature: Fotoromanzi and Cineromanzi in Postwar Italy and France

This article addresses a lesser known genre in the graphic narrative field, the photo novel, including the subgenre of the film photo novel. It offers a brief historical sketch of the photo novel and discusses the key aspects of this hybrid and definitely noncanonical format, both despised and systematically overlooked. The article studies the poetics of the photo novel (and some aspects of the reappropriation of the format the film photo novel) from various points of view: page layout, word and image interaction, genre constraints.