Monstrous spaces: Gothic in fictionalization of Pedra Bonita and Canudos

Abstract

Despite of what Brazilian literary criticism and historiography of 19th and 20th centuries declare, Gothic can be found in Brazilian literature. Recent studies have shown that regionalist fiction is one of the most developed proses in Brazilian terror, horror and thriller literature, characterizing the up-country, specially the sertões, as an authentic locus horribilis. In the novels O reino encantado: crônica sebastianista (1878), by Araripe Júnior, and Os Jagunços: novela sertaneja (1898), by Afonso Arinos, their narrators, to describe the messianic movements of Pedra Bonita and Canudos respectively, use a horrifying and macabre language to turn the Brazilian Northeastern landscape into a gloomy and obscure scenery. Both narratives explore the space not only as the stage in which the atrocities of the plots are practiced and suffered, but also as the main narrative element that constitutes an oppressive and fatal atmosphere. While O reino encantado describes the place of Pedra Bonita’s rituals to evoke feelings of horror and fear, Os Jagunços uses the sertaneja nature to demonstrate the republican soldiers’ terror in front of the canudenses. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n47a1185

Keywords

• poética gótica
• loci horribiles
• literatura brasileira
• movimentos messiânicos.