WHEN IS A VIGNETTE NOT A VIGNETTE?

 The word “vignette,” which I referenced in CATEGORIES OF STRUCTURAL LENGTH, originally wasn’t applied to any sort of narrative, having been formulated to describe a type of illustrative design work. Only later did it take on such meanings, according to Merriam-Webster, as “a quick narrative sketch” or “a brief scene within a play or movie.”

For the purpose of literary analysis, I make a distinction between two types of vignettes. The non-narrative type of vignette may be set apart from the main narrative, but it doesn’t have its own unity, often existing solely to relate some information to the audience, as with a character’s flashback that uses past events to explain the present. The narrative type of vignette, though, does possess some form of unity, usually seen in the consummation of one of the four potentialities. I’ll provide examples by drawing on previous mythcomics analyses, which of course means that in both examples I’m emphasizing the mythopoeic potentiality.

In the version of Wonder Woman’s origin set forth in WONDER WOMAN #1, the author, having already introduced his character in both ALL STAR COMICS and SENSATION COMICS, opens with an extended flashback to show the beginnings of the heroine’s homeland Paradise Island. Princess Diana herself has not even been born during the first four pages of the flashback, which are devoted to the origin of the Amazons and the travails they suffer at the hands of cruel male warriors. I would deem this section to be a non-narrative vignette. In terms of form, it meets my criteria: that of focusing mostly upon the beginning and the end of the story, without much in the way of a middle. Once the reader gets to the point where Paradise Island is established, the natural response is likely to be, “Yes, and then?”

The two-page “Origin of the Batman” from DETECTIVE COMICS #33, however, is a narrative vignette. The origin-tale is not organically part of the larger story in which it appears, and in truth the same two-pager might have been inserted into any story in that time-period, with the same narrative results. Yet it’s not the vignette’s functional independence that gives it the quality of unity, but the way in which the mythopoeic potentiality builds from beginning (“young Bruce Wayne suffers the trauma of seeing his parents killed by a ruthless criminal”) to end (“mature Bruce Wayne decides to use the omen of a creature of darkness to terrorize the denizens of the underworld.”)

To draw upon my observations from the essay-series THE LINE BETWEEN FAIR AND GOOD, the difference is comparable between a “disorganized essay with a strong theme statement” and an essay well organized enough to reinforce its central argument with copious evidence.