João Gilberto Noll and the subversion of reality (representation, displacement and permanences in O quieto animal da esquina e Harmada)

Abstract

João Gilberto Noll's novels O quieto animal da esquina and Harmada, published in 1991 and 1993, respectively, are representatives of his main thematic and stylistic characteristics: fluid and fragmentary narrative; stories which are rather pastiches, collages that are sometimes disconnected and nonsense; forgetful and disorientated narrator character without any certainty; wandering characters without identity; confusing spaces and scenes, which are erected and soon after deconstructed. This study analyzes how the novels O quieto animal da esquina and Harmada reconfigure the classic narrative structure of the novel and represent reality. The objective was, based on Noll's theory and the criticism about him, to discuss how these novels connect themselves to the literature tradition, mainly its prose's realistic fiction which was established in the 19th century, without refuting, at the same time, innovation traces that characterize the contemporary fiction. We also intended to discuss how these novels represent/express singularly the contemporary Brazilian reality even with a hybrid nature. Considering these purposes, the study had as its basis a bibliography that consisted, methodologically, in the study of the structure of the novel and the rupture operated in this genre by the modernity; in discussions about the modern Brazilian novel and its ways of representing reality; in reflections about the author's specificities of the novel's production and his dialogue with the sociocultural Brazilian reality since the 80's; in the theoretical questioning about the narrative instances and the new issues which are presented in the contemporaneity and, finally, in the analysis of ways of representing reality in O quieto animal da esquina and Harmada.