Narrators and their readers in Baltasar and Blimunda and The Elephant’s Journey

• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Valéria Hernandorena Monteagudo de
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Navegações (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/navegacoes/article/view/42476
• topic: Narrator; Historiographic Metafiction; Comparative Literature; Narrador; Metaficção Historiográfica; Literatura Comparada

In this article, we analyze the narrators of Baltasar and Blimunda and The Elephant’s Journey, by José Saramago, through the comparison between the narrative methods that bring readers and narrators together. They have in common the stylistic resources, such as metalanguage and orality marks, which seek to establish communication with the reader. However, in Baltasar and Blimunda, there is a compelled writer, whose strategies demand repertoire and re-reading. In The Elephant’s Journey, the language is less sophisticated and the narrator’s reflections go beyond critical awareness, as he explains the facts and correlates them in order to broaden the reach of his message. To carry out the analyses, critical support from Hutcheon (1991), Adorno (2008), Bakhtin (2010), Benjamin (2010), Genette (1979) and Friedman (2002) is used, as well as part of the critical acclaim dedicated to Saramago’s historiographical metafictions, especially Cerdeira (2018), Raoni (2002) and Cruz (2013).