Between the heart and the stomach: the Camilo Castelo Brancos distanced gaze

Author(s)

Luciene Marie Pavanelo

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2009-02-11

Examining board members

Paulo Fernando da Motta de Oliveira; Sérgio Paulo Guimarães de Sousa; Raquel dos Santos Madanêlo Souza

• Advisor: Paulo Fernando da Motta de Oliveira

Abstract

The objective of this work is to question the crystallized image of Camilo Castelo Brancos fiction, usually polarized in passionate-satirical, tear-laughter, serious-comic, or, in camilian terms, heart-stomach, trying to show that novels of distinct classifications may have more similarities than they look like. In order to show it, we will analyze the Camilos most famous work and main representative of the so-called passionate tendency, Amor de Perdição, and one of the most important exemplars of the satirical tendency, Coração, Cabeça e Estômago, and also a less known work, of controversial definition, O Que Fazem Mulheres, giving prominence to the mixture of the serious and the comic at them. Thus, we will attempt to focus in what we believe that is a common characteristic in the three novels: Camilos critical dialogue with the ideological-cultural and literary discourses of his time, constructed through parody and metaliterary comment. Therefore, we intend to propose a reflection about the camilian aesthetics, which literary resources that produce the break of dramatic tension may be approximated to the estrangement effect used by Bertolt Brecht in his epic theater. Finally, it is our aim to discuss that, due to his distanced gaze, Camilo may be associated to the tradition of menippean satire, which means and ends are distinct of the moral type satire. (AU)