THE GATHERING, OF ANNE ENRIGHT: A READING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE NEW HISTORICISM

After winning The Man Booker Prize, a prestigious English literary prize, with The Gathering, the Irish writer Anne Enright has achieved a considerable international prominence as a writer in the contemporary literary scene. The book tells the history of Veronica Hegarty, narrator and protagonist, who, after her brother’s suicide, goes through a difficult period in order to deal with the event. During this period, she reveals the history and conflicts of three generations of her family. This paper aims to present an analysis of this novel in the light of New Historicism as an introduction to its interpretation.

THE CONSTITUTION OF SUBJECTS AND MEANINGS: THE CASE OF THE QUOTAS FOR BLACK PEOPLE

ABSTRACT: In this study, I bring aspects that are related to the constitution of subjects and meanings, according to the French Discourse Analysis approach. As for that, I use four discursive sequences – corpus – taken from articles about quotas for black people published in Veja magazine. The main objective in this study is to discuss and relate theoretical propositions of the French Discourse Analysis about the constitution of the subject and of the meaning with the corpus for analysis, which composes a research recently concluded. The work is mainly based in the studies of Pêcheux (2009 [1988]). Under the theoretical perspective of the French Discourse Analysis, we may affirm that the subject is considered an effect of external processes which constitute him and which, meanwhile, erase this mechanism. The referred constitution results in the evidence that the subject is the origin, the controller of the meanings he expresses, or that are produced through his saying. Thus, it will be possible to ask “how or why is the subject an effect?” and “how can he not be the origin and the source of what is enunciated, if every person can only think about himself as being a subject (I am… I think…)?”. It is guided by these questions that I develop the observations of the referred approach.   KEYWORDS: subject; meaning effects; discourse.