Enunciative gazes in literary discourse: an analysis of the book covers of "Dom Casmurro"

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand how the written content of a literary text is represented in the cover images that illustrate it, considering its various editions in order to identify discursive statements through the relationship between statements in the verbal text and in the non-verbal covers. This is to ascertain as to how the statements found in this relationship originated and developed into a certain discourse on the text, since covers function in the domain of "knowledge", differentiating itself from the written narrative, which operates as a raw material of literary science. For that, we resort to the archaeological theory of Michel Foucault (2008), in his interpretation of "statement", "discursive formation", "Science and Knowledge", casting our gaze upon a series of covers around the various editions of the work "Dom Casmurro," by Machado de Assis, which were published in the XX and XXI centuries. As a result, some statements were identified that formed a discourse in the text and on the covers about "the feminine gaze".