A dialética saramaguiana: um método narrativo

Abstract

This study has as its objective investigate José Saramago's novel production according to narratology and philosophy. We found in all aspects of the novels by the Portuguese author, considered mature by the main scholars of his literary productions, a contradictory point of view in the fictional development of the topics covered, whether they are historical, religious, intimate or engaged. Based on that, we aim to prove that such inclination is the aesthetic result of a dialectical narrative method. The Saramaguian narratives chosen as the corpus for the analysis of such stylistic procedure are: A viagem do elefante [The elephant's journey], O homem duplicado [The duplicated man] and A caverna [The cave]. The choice of each of them aims to cover the three main issues in the writer's work: the past, human psychological intimacy and social criticism. Our essential references in narratology are Norman Friedman, in “O ponto de vista na ficção” [“The point of view in fiction"]; Gérard de Genette, in O discurso da narrativa [The narrative discourse]; Jean Pouillon, in O tempo no romance [The time in novels]; Theodor Adorno, in “Posição do narrador no romance contemporâneo” [“Position of the narrator in the contemporary novel”]; Walter Benjamin, in “O narrador” [“The narrator”]; Mikhail Bakhtin, in “A pessoa que fala no romance” [“The person who speaks in the novel”]; Paul Ricoeur, in “Os jogos com o tempo” [“The games with the time”]; and Käte Hamburger, in “O gênero ficcional ou mimético” [“The fictional or mimetic genre”]. The theoretical support for the philosophical discussions of our study about dialectics are, primarily, A República [The Republic], by Platão; the Enciclopédia das Ciências Filosóficas [Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences] and Fenomenologia do espírito [Phenomenology of the Spirit], by Hegel; A ideologia alemã [The German ideology] and O manifesto comunista [Communist Manifesto], by Engels and Marx, and the “Prefácio” [“Preface”] to Crítica da economia política [Critique of Political Economy], by Marx. The methodology used by our evaluative judgment is the critical examination of each book, respecting the particularities of all, in order to verify how this antithetical positioning of the announcing voice behaves aesthetically in each thematic axis explored by Saramago.