Word and image in Valêncio Xavier: the recovery of the past at the intersection of memory and invention

Abstract

This essay examines the novel Minha mãe morrendo e O menino mentido, by Valêncio Xavier (2001). The narrative strategy employed by Xavier, plotting word and image in the preparation of your text, discusses the possibilities of apprehending reality by verbal and graphic aesthetic codes, the same way that puts himself under suspicion status text of literary fiction as a means of recovery time and memory. The concepts of fictionality (inherent characteristic of verbal language) and a-fictionality (inherent in the photographic image) proposed by Roland Barthes (2006) constitute themselves as theoretical support in order to understand the intricate relationship engineered by Xavier in the fabric of a narrative that, while intended to retrieve imagery from a time past, this needs to invent a time that is not betrayed by memory.