Heteroglossia in José Saramago’s All the names

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the analysis of novelistic heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 2015) in All the Names, by José Saramago, with the aim of identifying the movements of refraction of the other’s discourse throughout the narrative, as well as the emergence of existentialist discourse, which is closely linked to the novel’s protagonist, Mr. José—a clerk at the bureaucratic Civil Registry Office— who transgresses his quiet life and embarks on a vertiginous journey in search of an unknown woman. In order to achieve this objective, the different levels of constitution of heteroglossia within the work were analyzed, with particular emphasis on the narrator’s voice, the discursive genres, and the styles that shape the text. More specifically, the analysis highlighted the insertion of popular voice, the opposition to religious discourse, and the discussion of ideological clashes among professional groups. Additionally, certain predicates were assigned to the discursive genres that make up the narrative, with special attention given to the diary and the credential. The novel’s peculiar dialogic structure—one of Saramago’s stylistic trademarks—was also taken into account. The analysis pointed to a subversion of social discourses, as well as the use of compositional strategies that bring the text closer to philosophical and aphoristic constructions, akin to the format chosen for the dialogues. Emerging from the intersection of these different strategies is the conclusion that the core of Saramago’s novel lies both in its existentialist engagement with the themes of life and death and in its displacement of social discourses, with the oppositional effect produced by.