<i>Nenhum Olhar</i>, by José Luís Peixoto and the interdiscoursive tension

Abstract

The novel Nenhum olhar, by the Portuguese author José Luís Peixoto, winner of the 2001 Saramago Award, focuses on the trajectory of a small group of characters from a nameless city (Alentejo?). Among them, some characters are emphasized, José and his wife – José’s parents –, and the cook, married to Moisés, from whom a daughter is born and she later marries Salomão. The text is built with basis on the duplication process which questions the mythical universe and permits considering its paradigm – the Holy Family – under new perspectives. The main interdiscoursive procedures from which the writer makes use of are responsible for the hybrid structure of the narrative which is built on the intersection between sacred and literary discourses. This paper shows as its main objective the study of the mechanisms from which the dialogue with the biblical proto-text occurs, viewing the examination of the tension between its underlying ideology and the one from the model on which it is based.