Fazer, na escrita, o abismo dela: a mulher que escreve em Um sopro de vida e Emily L.

Abstract

This work analyzes the figure of the woman who writes in the books A breath of life, by Clarice Lispector, and Emily L., by Marguerite Duras. In both texts of the corpus, the presence of female characters who are writers entails a mise en scène of the writing process. The aim is to discuss this movement through the image of mise en abyme. The structure of the abyss is used as a method to read the works of these writers, in which the abyss of writing inside of writing unfolds into other ones: the failure of knowledge, the torment of writing, the vertiginous paths of identity. To reflect upon these aspects, other texts by Clarice Lispector and Marguerite Duras are brought into the analysis, as well as essays, articles, and books by scholars who study their work, such as Benedito Nunes, Flávia Trocoli and Lucia Castello Branco. The figure of the woman is one of the tensions which unfolds through this abyss of writing, therefore, the place that the feminine occupies in these works is interrogated, via the writers’ own reflections on the subject, as well as the studies surrounding the feminine in writing, developed by Shoshana Felman, Hélène Cixous, Lucia Castello Branco, among others.