Stimme, Klang, Mündlichkeit: Poetische Diktion in João Guimarães Rosas Corpo de Baile

The essay discusses elements of “poetic diction” in two longer prose narratives of the volume Corpo de Baile (1956), by Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa, insofar as they combine mimesis of orality and poetic language and connection to a regional life world and modernist will to form in a way that is markedly different from the earlier, classic definition of “poetic diction” by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. The novella Campo Geral (“Miguilim”) exemplifies this poetic grounded in sound and vernacularity through the perceptions of the child protagonist Miguilim. The formally more daring novella Cara-de-Bronze (“Bonze face”), situated in the rural world of the sertão, is characterized both by theatrical-dialogic and a meta-narrative dimension, highlighting narration as well as listening as communal practices, as the text emphasizes both the immediacy of oral discourse and sound and its own character as a written, literary work.