Memory game, language bet: the construction of the Sertão in Grande Sertão: Veredas

Abstract

Guimaraes Rosa elaborates a web of senses that creates the sertao. The language game to which Riobaldo subjects himself elaborates both complex and dubious a space in which the reader (usually) gets lost. The sertao becomes a construction of language. The figure of ellipsis reinforces the intangible aspect of space, whose infinite limits end up desappearing in their own finitude. The appropriation of language by the mineiro writer reflects in a profound fashion the space and imagination of the sertao.