Laços míticos de família: paródia, rito e lirismo em Lavoura arcaica

Abstract

This study aims to elucidate the parody rewriting of the Parable of the Prodigal Son and its mythic allusions in Raduan Nassar s novel Lavoura Arcaica. Our aim is to point out, in Nassar s narrative discourse, the peculiarity of its structure in which we have identified poetic procedures as lyricism, silence, the sacred and the profane. These strategies recur in the novel, alternating the organic and the visceral with the problematization of the natural and the mythic. Therefore, we raised the following question: how does Lavoura Arcaica engage itself in a dialogue parody with the Parable of the Prodigal Son , and reconstruct, in a poetical prose, the mythical family ties, generating the rite of cosmic renewal? For us Lavoura Arcaica reconstructs these mythical ties through a tense lyricism between the dialogism and the silence. The mythical family ties in Lavoura Arcaica promote a circular narrative in which the rite of comic renewal is organizing with the fusion of the mystic and of parodying the presence of the sacred and the profane that bring the subject back to the organic, visceral and natural. Reflecting upon this issue, we studied the theory of myth dealing with the concept according to some scholars as Mircea Eliade, Gilbert Durand and Joseph Campbell. For the discussion of parody and dialogism, we have focused on Mikhail Bakhtin studies. We also discussed, the sacred and the profane as a pecualiarity of Nassar s novel, focusing on Mircea Eliade s studies, and the question of silence, presented in the novel, basing on Eni Orland´s studies. On the relation between poetry and lyricism, we have chosen the critical essays of T.S. Eliot. This study on Nassar s novel showed us that the mythical family ties are the bases for the discursive tensions and the parody rewriting of myth. Along this project, we observed that in the narrative discourse the myth of the eternal return has constructed Lavoura Arcaica as a great allegory of the ruins of a family unit