Dissimulação e erotismo em O conto do nadador, de Lídia Jorge

Abstract

This work tries to analyze “O conto do narrador”, from the book Maridos e outros contos
(1997) by Lidia Jorge, focusing on the way the Portuguese author creates her text, specially her way
of telling the story. This short-story, which is told by a third person narrator, calls attention because
of its experimentalism, its mixture of voices and time, but also because the ambiguities of the
narrative discourse. The narrator’s voice mixes with the characters’, into a structure full of
fragments and typographic marks, which cause a strange way, creating the defamiliarization of an
object, defined by Chklovski (1976) as “poetic perception”. The technic and creativity presented on
Lidia Jorge’s narrative make the short-story as stimulating and surprising, once its presents an
unsuspected and ironic end.