A frenchman in the Amazon

Abstract

Working in the tradition of the picaresque novel in L’ Exposition coloniale (1988), Erick Orsenna constructs a hero that comes to Brazil to teach Positivism to the recently proclaimed Republic. By the alternation of the narrative voices – the voices of three generations of a family – Gabriel Orsenna (1988, p.357), the subject-narrator protagonist “[…] in charge of the narrative mission, the editor of all those pages […]”, whose voice takes upon himself the almost totality of the narration, in some few times yields space to the narrative voice of his father, Louis; but the story is really written by Erick Orsenna. That is, by the singular treatment given to the enunciation, which frequently interchanges its subjects, transforming the enunciator into enunciatary, the narrator into narratary and vice versa, the author has fun weaving the threads of a multiple story in which he gives himself up to a historic passage, presenting as his true hero the 20th Century, with its marvels and its miseries. In all cases, next to fascination and strangeness, images and stereotyped concepts predominate which the author – Gabriel Orsenna, the picaresque hero – constructs of Brazil, of its people, of the daily facts, of the habits and manners, of the local practices: the Brazilian embrace, the music, the amazonic legends, the riverain habits, the architecture of Manaus, etc. Keywords: Narrative voices. Subject-narrator-protagonist. Narration. Enunciator. Enunciatary. Narrator-Narratary.