Semiotica ad alta quota. Il metodo Floch all’opera in Tintin in Tibet

Apparently marginal in the reception of Jean-Marie Floch’s textual work, Tintin in Tibet in fact reclaims a central position wherein the core methodological principles of the structural paradigm find their place. Beyond presenting itself as an admirable semiotic reading of a frequently revisited comic book, Tintin in Tibet is above all a discourse on the semiotic method and its analytical procedures. From this perspective, it is akin to Greimas’s Maupassant, whose nature as practical exercises in textual semiotics now echoes in the subtitle of the Italian edition. Furthermore, just as scientific practice is inseparable from the researcher’s ethics, so too does Tintin’s mountain become Floch’s exemplary form of life. This paper illuminates Floch’s analytical method with examples drawn from the book.