The breach of paradigms in Dona Guidinha do Poço, by Manuel de Oliveira Paiva

Abstract

Although forgotten by critics and literary anthologies, and publish for the first time in 1952, the writer's novel from Ceará, Manuel de Oliveira Paiva (1861-1892), Dona Guidinha do Poço (1891), reveals a surprising modernity, breaking several narrative parameters: construction of characters, unity of action, narrative rhythm, treatment of time and mixture of voices that relativize the narrative and prevent a univocal interpretation of the story. These procedures indicate the fissures of end-of-the-century canonical models and herald the modern novel. If some textual components suggest that it is a chronicle of the northeastern sertão or the report of a "real" event that occurred a few years before and known to all, others disallow such interpretation and suggest to the reader that it is a "realistic" novel. However, this line of reading cannot be taken safely either, as the ironic voice of an omniscient narrator, which unfolds in many other voices, opens breaches in the canonical model of realism and moves us away from the supposed “slice of reality” that carries the illusion that what we read is “truth”. The multiple ruptures that the text exposes seem to alert us that what we are reading is just “literature”, that it is the “truth”, but the truth of fiction. The purpose of this article is to examine the different strategies of textual construction that allow us to perceive the recurring paradigm shifts in Dona Guidinha do Poço, a “forgotten” novel that, however, allows us to see the reverse of the textual fabric that many authors strategically sought to camouflage.