The stigma in José Lins do Rego

• Grant number: 12/06740-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Alcir Bernardez Pecora
• Grantee: Davi Lopes Villaça
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Reading some of José Lins do Rego's novels, it seemed to me to be a common trait, in his characters, the presence of some personal stigma of psychological nature that troubles the relationship between those individuals and the world around them. Due to some event or circumstance of their past, they have a tendency to feel marked by some kind of deficiency that excludes them from what seems to be the real life to them. They feel separated from the world, imprisoned into a weakened existence, unable to act, to be part of the reality that surrounds them. They always look fearful when faced with the necessity to take some attitude, for they find, in their own stigmas, a proof of their impotence and fragility before life. As a result of that, they end up becoming introverted beings: they get isolated inside themselves, tormented by their fear and suffocated by wishes they cannot express. At the same time, they keep as observers of the story that develops around them, wanting to be part of it, but too afraid to do that. Bearing these suppositions in mind, it seems interesting to me to do a comparative study of some novels by the author trying to examine the nature of those stigmas (that is, the way they originate and how they relate to their respective characters), their role in the elaboration of the these narrative's plot, and which reflections the recurrence of this aspect would raise about some central questions presented by the writer in his work.(AU)