The modern and the contemporary: dialogic relations between Poe and Vilela

Abstract

Starting from Bakhtin’s notion that a speech meets another and both participate in a lively and tense interaction, current paper observes and describes the existing dialogical relationship between the short stories Nunca aposte sua cabeça com o diabo ― conto moral, by Edgar Allan Poe, and A cabeça, by Luiz Vilela, a tale in the eponymous work. Since the two texts are foregrounded on satire, such perspective is investigated in each short story and the coinciding and distancing factors are pinpointed. The theoretical framework by Mikhail Bakhtin in his Estética da criação verbal and Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski is employed. Poe’s aim, representing the modern short story, is disrupted and subverted by Luiz Vilela who sets up a new way to narrate the short story.