Santa Rita Pescadeira

the myth in Torto arado, by Itamar Vieira Júnior

Abstract

This article sought to analyze the mythical manifestation of Santa Rita Pescadeira, in Torto Arado, by Itamar Vieira Junior. Based on the theoretical conditioning from Ernst Cassirer, Mircea Eliade, André Jolles and André Dabezies, aiming to define the scope and limits of the transposition of myth to literature, we adopted as analytical category the character, outlined in two movements in the plot. In the first, she expresses the nature of resistance established by her work at Fazenda Água Negra; and in the second, her release occurs, materialized at the end of the story. The analysis proposed to develop, in a path from fiction to reality, a discussion about the maintenance and the ancestral resistance of significant practices, between sacralization and desacralization. Thus, the assumption made was that, when recalling in the narrative, the enchanted one of Jarê, Santa Rita Pescadeira, not only rescues the History of the hinterland quilombolas from Bahia and from Brazil. By highlighting the traumatic legacy of slavery, as well as the beliefs, disbeliefs and hopes linked to it, the character's performance in that community made possible a political awareness, faith and struggle, demonstrating how the myth, from orality to writing, acts timelessly in the transformation of society.