The poet, the madman, and the child: partners in the game of language and strategic framings in order to survive

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, Breno
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: letrônica
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/letronica/article/view/28540
• topic: Framing; War; Mia Couto; Linguistic Sign; Survival.; Enquadramento; Guerra; Mia Couto; Signo Linguístico; Sobrevivência.

This paper proposes reading Terra sonâmbula, Mia Couto’s novel about the Mozambique Civil War (1977-1992), in connection to Michel Foucault’s parallel between the poet and the madman, presented in The order of things. In this book, Foucault analyses how the poet and the madman similarly play with the language, regardless of how distinctively they have been judged for their common use of the language. This connection between Couto and Foucault is justified by the presence of the poet and the madman in Terra sonâmbula. The child also appears in the novel as a third type of subject who breaks the link between the language and the truth by playing with the language. After associating the poet with the madman, and with the child, it is suggested that these social roles or framings, commonly taken as deviant or precarious, whether in a war context or in others, may be a clever survival tactic.