Osman Lins’ Avalovara: a world’s quadridimensional structure

Abstract

This paper aims to interpret how world spaces are designed in Avalovara (1973), a book by Osman Lins, a writer from Pernambuco (Brazil). In order to do so, we consider concepts such as “world” and “worldliness”, by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, which are deeply developed by Foucault’s discussion about “heterotopia” and “similitude”. Deleuze’s and Guatari’s “map” concept will be also studied, and also Lins’ literary theory itself. Thus, we interpret that the fictional world structure depends on articulating hermeneutic frames or dimensions: 1) factuality performed by the writer; 2) how the writer understands such factuality; 3) narrative text structure, which demands knowledge of narrative art; and 4) the interpretation of those three dimensions’ by the reader.