Dialogic hieroglyphs: Brief analysis of Monteiro’s palimpsest

Abstract

The analysis of João César Monteiro's work, as a plural textual unity, implies an investigation based on the search for loci similes, which are dialogic segments in which the reverberation from other textual collections can be heard. The search for the “texts within texts” chain in Monteiro's work, along with the typologic analysis of both transtextual relationships and the point where they unfold, enables us to demonstrate the “palimpsest” aspect, which defines his filmography. For these very relationships to be possible the presence of a “strange” element is necessary, that is to say, the presence of another text and/or reader that, in turn, is nothing but another text, as defined by Jurij Lotman. Therefore, our aim is also to examine the relationships established between the person(s) and textual excerpts, which require someone in order to be acknowledged. For this reason, we use Umberto Eco's concepts of "empirical reader" and "model reader" in order to justify the regressive philological research whose purpose is individuation and interpretation of the elements in the monteirian dialogical universe. A fresh exegetic perspective of Monteiro's work is eventually made possible due to linguistic syncretism and the coexistence of heterogeneous elements. The theoretical content of such movies is related to the concepts of nonlinearity and vertical reading, both of them capable of explaining the profound nature of the independent narrative unities which create the film narrative and disengage the artist from the constriction of verisimilitude.