A terceira margem da literatura: transferências entre sistemas de cultura em The Last Of Us Parte 2

Abstract

This thesis investigates The Last of Us part 2 through the lens of Polysystem Theory (Even-Zohar, 1990), proposing that the game constitutes a nomadic product that inhabits a “third margin” between the print literary system, the digital literature system, and the electronic games system. Drawing on the Rosian metaphor of the crossing—which informs both the methodological gesture and the analytical trajectory—the study problematizes the historical indefinition of the literary object, arguing that literariness is not an intrinsic attribute of the text but rather the result of systemic forces mobilized by institutions, repertoires, producers, consumers, and markets. The first part examines the print literary system, highlighting its central position within the literary polysystem and the legitimizing role of the book, singular authorship, and inherited repertoires from a tradition which, although dominant, remains in constant tension with peripheral strata. The study then analyzes the digital literature system, focusing on the role of the Electronic Literature Organization and showing how multimodality, algorithmic processes, and material experimentation broaden the notion of literariness beyond the written word. In this third margin, The Last of Us part 2 is shown to function as a catalyst for frictions among these systems: its audiovisual narrative, its sensorial reading aesthetics, and its programming as a meaning-making agent instantiate what the dissertation terms a “novel of images,” a mode of narrativity that displaces the reader-player into a hybrid interpretive position. The analysis also reveals a crisis of authorship, disputes over legitimacy, and tensions between expectations of interactivity and authorial control within the game system. These conflicts confirm that the product is the core of a systemic misalignment, challenging stable taxonomies and demonstrating that contemporary cultural objects circulate across mutually influencing systems. The study concludes that The Last of Us part 2, by refusing a fixed position, makes visible the polysystem’s own movement: a literature in transit that requires of the researcher not the comfort of familiar margins, but the courage to inhabit the center of the river, where new narrative forms emerge and take shape.