The time as style and discourse subject in the urban novel Senhora, by José de Alencar

Abstract

This work belongs to Study Group “Stylistics Studies” of the graduate program in Linguistic at Universidade Cruzeiro do Sul (São Paulo – Brazil), whose line of research considers the relationship between discourse, grammar and style and this article aims to investigate how José de Alencar (1829-1877) produces stylistically in the novel Senhora (1875) the aspect that he calls “undecided, vague and multiple form so natural in the teenagers” that he uses to qualify, at the forewords of his novel Sonhos d’ouro (1872), a characteristic of Brazilian literature’s childhood. In this way, the work analyzes an urban novel, Senhora, not only through space where the history develops, but under the perspectives of the techniques whereby the author manipulates the time in the narrative, sometimes suggesting the mythical redemption of the past, sometimes presenting the present time as raw material for the narrative.