A discursive look at the book covers: the dialogues between images and words in “Dom Casmurro”

Abstract

This research aims at understanding whether the languages present in a collection of book covers of a romance narrative portray the contents of the work, with a view towards the process of analysis of literary texts. To this end, one calls upon to the archaeological theory of Michel Foucault in his concept of “statement” and “discursive formation” contained in the book “The Archaeology of Knowledge”, which were applied in the work “Dom Casmurro” of Machado de Assis. It is shown as a result, two statements: "The city of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century" and "female betrayal and adultery," which constituted the discursive formation: “The female betrayal and adultery in Rio de Janeiro of the nineteenth century.” Eventually it was observed that the discursive theory may help in the practice of literary analysis of narrative texts, opening a possibility of more studies, including existing ones, also in the field of Information Science.