Speaking persona: reading of Carta à Rainha Louca for concepts of narratology

This article analyzes the contemporary narrative Carta à rainha louca (2019), by Maria Valéria Rezende, an epistolary novel with a historical context, drawing on concepts from postclassical narratology, narrator studies, and the categories of focus proposed by Genette (1995) and Bal (2021). Based on the theorizing of Landa (2016) and Rabatel (2016), we also read passages of prose, examining the narrator as a subject of speech, but also of duty and action, with characteristics that border on the quintessential “being of fiction”, the character, while simultaneously approximating and referring to the real being of authorship. In this reading, we also understand the importance of observing the speaker’s position in relation to the time of experience of the narrated story. Finally, we pay special attention to the composition of the text in an attempt to analyze, within the fabric of the word, the narrator’s developments as both character and sender.

Keywords:
Carta à rainha louca; speaking persona; narration; sender