Representations of Otherness through the Language of Comics:

Cleopatra VII, an Example of the Reception of a Historical Character

Abstract

This work approaches the reception of the historical character Cleopatra VII within comic books. By translating the collective imagination through a scripto-iconic code that comprises both text and images, comics present a mode of expression that portrays this character within the confines of otherness: a simplified image based on the dichotomous relationship between the Western and the Eastern worlds. This assertion is substantiated through the analysis of panels from Asterix and Cleopatra by Goscinny and Uderzo (1965), Cleopatra and the Lost Pyramid by Martz-Schmidt and Pérez Navarro (1986), and Cleopatra: The Fatal Queen by Marie and Thierry Gloris and Joël Mouclier (2017-23). Using the perspective of Classical Reception, the analysis has shown that, although each era and each culture projects its own Cleopatra under various social, political, and cultural conditioning factors, this character is maintained in our imaginary grounded on certain common places that mark said otherness.