Roberto Schwarz and Mikhail Bakhtin

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how the notion of heterodiscourse, originating from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the novel, is articulated in Roberto Schwarz’s critical work on Machado de Assis. To do this, we will analyze some excerpts from important essays by the critic about the author, taking into account the type of argumentation used in direct dealing with the literary text. It is also proposed to question how this type of analysis is combined with the theoretical framework that appears most frequently in the work of the critic from São Paulo, namely, the tradition of Frankfurt critical theory. As a conclusion, we discuss the possibilities of bringing these two theoretical matrices closer together for literary analysis.