Investigando vidas: a formação do sujeito contemporâneo no romance As três vidas, de João Tordo.

Abstract

Considering that contemporaneity has brought very complex issues to the subject's experience, therefore, also to the literary work, with a new look at writing, literature, and the act of writing, this work proposes to investigate some of the questions that emerge from this context. In this way, it sheds light on the literary production of the author João Tordo (1975-), based on one of his most prominent books: As Três Vidas (2008), reflecting on some of his traits and literature in the 21st century. This study analyzes how complex issues brought by contemporary modernity and liquid relationships cross the narrative and create a different place for the figure of the author. At the same time, it seeks to analyze how this narrative recomposes models of tradition, verifying the possible relationships with the detective novel and with the political and cultural history of the nineteenth century. Thus, it is verified how this book raises questions about the need and role of writing and fiction in the formation of the contemporary subject, who walks between security and freedom. Still, this dissertation investigates how the uncertainties exposed by the narrator concerning his memories open space for reflections about some ontological questions, motivated or driven by states of melancholy or dissatisfaction with the profession he exercises (a writer). These dissatisfactions lead him to constant attempts at self-discovery and self-understanding, as well as his place in the world in the course of his stories that mix remarkable facts from History, the canon of Western literature, and mass culture in a globalized world.