Reflexões metaortográficas às margens do romance “A mais encantadora mulher” (1903), de Gonzaga Filho

Abstract

In 1903, José Basileu Neves Gonzaga Filho (Dec. 02, 1849 – Sep. 09, 1931) published the novel A mais encantadora mulher – um romance para senhoras (The most charming woman - a novel for ladies). At that time, the spelling of the words was marked by graphic variations, so that we could find, for example, in the same text, the pairs “charta / carta”, “mez / mes” and “asa / aza”. The novelist resented that there was no common ground on the spelling of the terms of language. Thus, when writing his novel, Gonzaga Filho elaborates a small lexicon to justify the writing of a set of words. This work follows a methodological path of bibliographical and documentary nature, guided by the theoretical assumptions taken from the graphematic studies developed by some Spanish historians of language (SÁNCHEZ-PRIETO BORJA, 1998; PENSADO, 1998; FRAGO GRACIA, 2002; RAMÍREZ LUENGO, 2012) and aims to ponder about some motivations listed by Gonzaga Filho in order to justify his spelling solutions, whether they are phonetic, etymological, prosodic or of (neo-Latin) harmony. We find in Gonzaga Filho a metaorthographic attitude that is inserted in the heart of the history of Portuguese orthography and that reveals the pathway that the writing of the Portuguese language has taken, in past synchronies, towards its standardization.