Riobaldo's denials and the sign of the Faustian bargain in Grande Sertão: Veredas: an alibi for the pact maker subject

• Grant number: 19/15339-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2019
• End date: September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal Investigator: Yudith Rosenbaum
• Grantee: Marcelo Hime Funari
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project proposes a psychoanalytical reading of the work Grande Sertão: Veredas, by Guimarães Rosa. More precisely, it aims to analyze its construction of the Faustian bargain, to insert it in the theme's literary tradition and test if it is possible to treat it as a figuration of hidden human substances, here dealt as the unconscious of the narrator. The reading of this unconscious, in turn, will lay on the text and on the stylistic devices' analysis, considering the dialogic character of the narrative, which is a product of the storyteller memory. Between those devices, we highlight the negative expressions, that will be read according to the Freudian concept of Denial, also a mechanism for the unconscious. By these means, we intend to analyze such constructions in order to find new interpretations of the pact with the Devil in the modern novel; the motives of the hero as a pact maker and the narrative composition's strategies.