Supernatural metamorphoses in literature

the fantastic in "Açude", by Roberto Beltrão

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the short story "Açude", present in the work Na escuridão das brenhas, by Roberto Beltrão, in the light of metamorphosis and the fantastic. Through a theoretical framework that allows us to perceive the different visions of these categories in literary studies, such as the assumptions of Irene Bessière and David Roas, regarding the fantastic, and the reflections of Vera Maria Tietzmann Silva, regarding metamorphosis, it was possible to validate the aesthetic effectiveness in the investigation of the chosen corpus. Conditioned by social and historical frameworks, the narrative is set in the Sertão of Pernambuco, more precisely in the city of Triunfo, marked by cultural traits that shape the knowledge and human imagination, seen through folkloric prisms, legends, and oral tradition. Shadowed by the dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural, the author's text amalgamates a metamorphic process, with the legend of the transformation of a baby into a hideous and giant snake, motivating the transgression of the perceptions of normality. As zoomorphisms are mobilized, the nature of the fantastic is reiterated in destabilizing the vision of the real, both of the character and the reader, in a world simile to reality, which threatens the coordinates that give security to the everyday life and flow to rationality.