The construction of the doubt about Capitu's betrayal in Dom Casmurro: a cognitive analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/1982-6850.2023.262030Keywords:
Cognitive narratology, mind reading, Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro, anthropological semioticsAbstract
The paper applies Lisa Zunshine's cognitive narratology and Paul Kockelman's anthropological semiotics to the analysis of the procedures employed by Machado de Assis in Dom Casmurro to provoke doubt about Capitu's betrayal. By looking at theories of literature and language with a cognitive bias, we understand textual composition as an instance of ordering information in order to stimulate the reader's mental activity. Specifically, 1) we use the concept of mind reading to analyze how the text reduces access to Capitu's mental states, mitigating the renewal of the character's knowledge; 2) we semiotically analyze how the verisimilitude of item 1 presupposes the indexing of Capitu's social status after marriage. The overall aim is to analyze Machado's writing, testing the merit of new theories for the analysis of narrative fiction.
References
ASSIS, Machado de. Dom Casmurro. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Penguin Classics Companhia das Letras, 2016.
BARTHES, Roland. S/Z. Tradução de J. Guinsburg. 10ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1990.
CALDWELL, Hellen. The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: a study of Dom Casmurro. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960.
KOCKELMAN, Paul. Agent, Person, Subject, Self: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SPERBER, Dan; WILSON, Deirdre. Relevance: communication and cognition. 2. ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
WOOD, James. How Fiction Works. Canada: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd, 2008.
ZUNSHINE, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Pedro Ramos Dolabela Chagas; Ayla Mello Batistela; Giulia Bernardi Hupalo
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