The integrative analysis and the dialogical method: frontiers and affinities

Abstract

This study proposes the viability of articulating Antonio Candido’s integrative analysis and Bakhtin Circle’s dialogical method as simultaneous procedures for literary criticism. To obtain such intent, the singularities and the relational traits that authorise the concurrent articulation of both proposals are discussed, highlighting the introduction of social and historical factors within the fictional work by both understandings. The theorical and methodological conclusions derived from that dialogue – from which results the enrichness of the analytical readings by the application of concepts such as structure and utterance – are applied to a brief discussion of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, by José Saramago, source from which it was observed, as a consequence of adjoining different and complemantary conclusions about the novel, a favourable scenery to the defended encounter.