REGIMES DE INTERAÇÃO EM “PENÉLOPE”, DE JOÃO DO RIO

Abstract

The article analyses the short story “Penelope”, by João do Rio, under the perspective of the regimes of interaction and of the game of semiotic restrictions. The aim is to answer to the question: How does the interaction happen between the subjects and what meaning effects emerge from it? The object of analysis is the short story “Penelope”, part of the book A mulher e os espelhos (The woman and the mirrors), of which the first edition was published in 1919. The theoretic basis conjugates Eric Landowski’s Sociossemiotic studies about the regimes of interaction with Greimas and Rastier’s studies on the models of sexual relations system. In the short story, the regime of interaction which prevails is the accident. A random event crosses the paths of the subjects whose interaction is based on pure risk. From the point of view of semiotic restriction, the individual drives (nature values, euphoric ones) are affirmed, overlapping the social coercions (culture values, dysphoric ones). Based on the models of sexual relations system proposed by Greimas and Rastier, this article shows that the sexual relations between the subjects are compatible in the model of individual values, but incompatible in social and economic models.