Sugar in Rosa: Metaphor, displacement of sense and conditions of production

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the possible displacement of sense from metaphor “Sugar is a white little powder that gives coffee a very bad taste, when you don’t put it on”, from João Guimarães Rosa, considering the different conditions of production. Thus, seek to glimpse how metaphor hides ideological sayings, that can be unveiled with a thorough analysis from conditions of production and the sense effects present and hidden, what reveals the need of unveiling, in order to recognize and how its mechanisms. The level of event comes to light in the study of this metaphor, as a part of two different versions: the first inside a newspaper column, in 1954, that went through changes and became the second one, as the preface “Vermicelli and hermeneutics”, in the book Tutaméia, in 1967. To substantiate the analysis, we utilized the theoretical reference of French Line of Discourse Analysis, in particular Michel Pêcheux and Eni Puccinelli Orlandi, as well as some historians and literary critics. Then, we verified how historicity is present in a metaphor of Guimarães Rosa, contributing to its displacement of sense, with a dialogue between structure and event.