Tell and not tell

the narration inside the graphic novel "O Mez da Grippe" by Valêncio Xavier

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the narrative process developed in the graphic novella O Mez da Grippe (1981), by Valêncio Xavier (1933-2008), which will be analized and compared to other of his productions that are included in the tradition of graphic novels. Thus, by confronting Xavier’s novella with Benjamin’s ideas (2012) on the extinction of the narrator, as well as those by Adorno (2003) and Santiago (1989) about the contemporary postmodern narrator, we aim at analysing how narrative in a literary production such as this one is developed, once it is characterized by the inclusion of graphic art such as newspaper clippings, ads, postcards and collage, which enter the novella as a means of  mediating the writing. The juxtaposition of images as indications of the real, which, in turn, build the fictionality when they are removed from their space/time frame, is responsible for the narrative, which is put together by the reader, in a come-and-go, a cross-intersection movement of information.