Destecendo uma carta pela estelística da expressão

We aim to analyse the text written by Eça de Queirós, “Carta ao Sr. Mollinet”, theorizing the stylistics of Marcel Cressot’s expression, called “the texture”. We discuss what is sought in the reading of a text nowadays: the form, the meaning or the form that produces meaning? Even though through stylistics there is identifi cation and description of the linguistic categories in the text, the morphological identifi cation in the enunciation level is emptied, if it is done separately. It is from the semantic-syntactic and melodic axes that Eça infl ates his characters with life. The characterization of Pacheco and Portuguese people is supported by the nexus, a producer of antagonistic meta-signifi cation in relation to the fi rst meaning. Eça’s irony results from the reverse meaning – from “ne pas dire”. The nexus is the great meaningful cohesion between logical and metalogic discourse – producing new signifi cations; multiplying verbal resources, which are created in order to metamorphose the linguistic sign into pictorial or iconic signs. The irony governs the whole constructive tessitura that stems from new referents, which result from demiurgical relations between themselves because of the metalogical process, as it allows to establish and change the direction when sign and referent, signifi er and signifi ed, utterance and context are related. The analysis of Eça’s selected text enriches the discoveries presented by the Stylistics of Expression.