History, politics and allegory in fictional prose of Dyonelio Machado

Author(s)

Fernando Simplício dos Santos

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2013-05-16

Examining board members

Francisco Foot Hardman; Antônio Carlos Hohlfeldt; Jaime Ginzburg; Mario Luiz Frungillo; Daniela Birman

• Advisor: Francisco Foot Hardman

Abstract

This work seeks to analyze the way the relation between history, politics and allegory is developed in the novel tetralogy made up of O louco do Cati [The Madman from Cati] (1942), Desolação [Desolation] (1944), Passos perdidos [The Lost Steps] (1946), and Nuanças [Nuances](1981); and mainly in the trilogy composed of Deuses econômicos [Economical Gods] (1966), Sol subterrâneo [Underground Sun] (1981) and Prodígios[Prodigies] (1980), by Dyonelio Machado (1895-1985). To test our hypotheses, we carried out an examination which also makes use of allegory as an analytical method. First, our purpose is to investigate how the novels O louco do Cati, Desolação, Passos perdidos and Nuanças represent a subtle or implicit criticism whose main targets are the Vargas Era and the capitalist economic system; and how such feature tends to gradually become more and more explicit, mainly in the last narrative. Second, our examination is focused on the study of Deuses econômicos, Sol subterrâneo and Prodígios, so as to check on how these novels expand and reinforce the questioning of dictatorial and tyrannical violence, and to point out its most remote social, political, economic and religious contradictions. In doing that, at the first level of interpretation of this trilogy, we see a direct inquiry into the despotism of Emperor Nero; and at another level, we notice a deeper lay of meaning, in which there is also a tacit judgment that is passed not only on the Vargas Era, but also on the military dictatorship and on modern imperialism. Besides those issues, we highlight a criticism - always underlying the novels - of some political-religious issues in Rio Grande do Sul which were current in that time when the three works were published. It especially imparts new meanings to stalemates between the members of the integralist movement and representatives of the National Liberation Alliance (ANL), as well as between communists and capitalists, among other things. In those three works, the allegory coupled with the appreciative inquiry method allows for identifying a text and subtexts, as we perceive a dialogue of intertextual nature. Therefore, studying the narratives of the author implies in recognizing the existence in them of a passage between two distinct forms of criticism. The first one may be considered as "less complex" while the second one can be seen as "much more expressive". We also seek to systematize the literature by Dyonelio Machado, not only the prison literature but also the literature on its "tragic consequences". That is done mainly through the comparative study between the tetralogy made up of the novels O louco do Cati, Desolação, Passos perdidos and Nuanças and the trilogy composed of Deuses econômicos, Sol subterrâneo and Prodígios. Thus, we believe it is possible to trace how part of Dyonelio Machado's poetics is organized and rearticulated throughout time, in a way that makes it also possible to outline the path and changes through which some phases of his aesthetic and artistic thinking passed (AU)