Re-framing the Crusades: The Representation of Space, Landscape and Architecture in the Comics Series Croisade

In both medieval and contemporary culture, defamiliarization in space frames the imagined relationship with the other in fantasized views of the East. This paper addresses ways the creative imagination functions in the contemporary four-volume Belgian comics series Croisade by Dufaux and Xavier (vol I-IV). They foster a self-reflexive vision of competing universes, from the Celtic to the ancient Roman, from the Moorish to the Gothic. The cultural relativism of our contemporary era seems more relevant than any attempt to historicize faithfully the fictional plot. These comic books exploit the visual evidence of space as emblematic natural sites of heterotopias like the desert, and architectural space like Jerusalem, some burial sites, the sultan’s oriental palace and the Crusaders’ fortress, while assessing the changing representation of space from the medieval era to the present.