Text First (or the literacy of the soul)

How can you read your own soul through the "skin" of a literary text?

In Text First (or the Literacy of the Soul), André Boniatti offers a compelling response to the lack of specific methodologies in literary studies. Moving away from the rigid formulas of linguistics and grammar, Boniatti proposes Literary Parallelism and Literobiognosis: a groundbreaking approach where the structure of language and the depth of human existence walk in absolute symmetry.

The book is a complete system of interpretation. In its opening chapters, the author establishes a rigorous theoretical foundation through a dense dialogue with thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Adorno. He demonstrates that a literary text is not merely an object to be dissected, but a living territory to be inhabited.

The centerpiece of this work is its "laboratory proof": an interpretive essay written as a trilingual theatrical drama. In this performance (English, Portuguese, and Spanish), Fernando Pessoa and his master Alberto Caeiro face off in an ontological clash where theory becomes body and voice. Here, the drama is not just fiction; it is the vivid materialisation of the Text First methodology, revealing the "congeniture" of being hidden behind the words.

A work to be read, studied, and lived.