Reminiscences of the Gothic in the regionalism of José de Alencar's o tronco do IPE

Abstract

The research seeks to promote the study of O Tronco do Ipê (1871), by José de Alencar, from the consideration of elements of Gothic literature that articulate with the regionalist aesthetics in the work. The novel, as the purpose of meeting the nationalist romantic project, focuses on aspects of the local reality, associating, however, with regionalism elements derived from a tradition, which appears in the European romance between the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly sensitive to mystery, the attraction to the sublime, the evocation of the supernatural, which assume coherence in the so-called Gothic genre. Such elements are insinuated in O Tronco do Ipê, allowing the consideration of the novel's particularities, from the correlation between certain commonplaces of the Gothic narratives and the shaping of the color-local, which give the plot to the work's atmosphere an exotic element and imaginative that involves matter closely linked to the Brazilian peasant culture. In O Tronco do ipê, the superstitions, the appeal of the harsh landscape and the mystery emanating from the remote regions of the interior are represented, on the one hand, as a record of Brazilian regional life and, on the other, from events that open the imagination to instances of the fantastic, the wonder at the sublime nature and the mystery. The Gothic element can be seen in certain commonplaces presented by O Tronco do the ipê, which will be the object of our considerations, in particular the ghostly presence of the past and the locus horribilis, vector of sublime wonder. These commonplaces are dialectically related to other recurring features in regionalist literature, such as national-type development, marvelous popularism, and the harsh nature idealized often as a locus amoenus space. Therefore, we intend to study the way in which these two axes of motives, namely Gothic and regionalist, dialogue for the composition of the uniqueness of the work, inscribed between the register of local traditions and the inflows inherited from European imaginative fiction. (AU)