The epistolary writing of Manuel dos Passos de Oliveira Telles

Semi-diplomatic Edition and Semantic-enunciative Analysis

Abstract

Drawing on the largely unpublished documentary collection of the Sergipe intellectual Manuel dos Passos de Oliveira Telles (1859–1935), a pioneer in the study of Sergipe culture and identity, this article presents a semi-diplomatic edition of two letters written in 1922 and offers a reading guided by the principles of Enunciation Semantics. The conservative philological edition of the letters constitutes the empirical basis of the study, developed in light of the enunciative model formulated by Eduardo Guimarães, which understands meaning as the effect of the enunciation event in historically situated spaces. Addressed to Admiral Amintas Jorge and journalist Silva Viana, the letters allow observation of the ways in which the speaker is agenced into speaking from different enunciative positions, depending on the epistolary scene and the regimes of discourse circulation. The investigation highlights procedures of articulation, re-writing, and designation through which ethical values, moral judgments, and meaning effects related to the speaker’s position in the discourse are constructed. The results show that Oliveira Telles epistolary writing constitutes a space for ethical elaboration and symbolic contestation, contributing to the understanding of how his enunciative position is manifested and constructed in the circulation of discourse, as well as of the enunciative functioning of written Portuguese in the early twentieth century.