The conception of the narrative act represented by the character Raimundo Silva, from the History of the siege of Lisbon, by José Saramago

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to reflect on the concept of the narrative act represented by Raimundo Silva’s character from The History of the Siege of Lisbon, by José Saramago. To achieve it, Raimundo Silva’s interpretation of his own experiences before and after his lawbreaking – saying “no” instead of “yes” in a historical document already consecrated by tradition – was evaluated. Paul Ricoeur’s approach in Threefold Mimesis (which is part of his work Time and Narrative (1983 [1994]) was used to evidence how much theory can enlighten the literature. This theoretic body gains importance for its dealing with the narrative identity in which the act of narrating by challenging facts constitutes the way through which the subject organizes his practical experiences. This can explain Raimundo Silva’s utter need to modify someone else’s text, and, thus, his own identity, crossing the limits of a proofreader’s functions.