The regionalism and the coordinates of the fantastic narrative’s space in four 19th century Brazilian short stories

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the short stories “A dança dos ossos”, by Bernardo Guimarães, “Acauã”, by Inglês de Sousa, “A tapera”, by Coelho Neto, and “Pedro Barqueiro”, by Afonso Arinos, from the perspective of Fantastic. Considering that the space represented in these narratives is configured from a point of view essentially linked to the urban environment, the aim is to demonstrate how this representation is connected with the construction of the fantastic effect while establishing a geographical and symbolic dichotomy, in which the conception of a center, attached mainly to Brazilian capital at that period, and a periphery, constituted by other regions of the country, is implicit. To support this interpretation, I emphasize narrative strategies that demarcate a distance between a literate and rational culture, associated with urban environments, and an oral and superstitious tradition, associated with regions far from the large centers of nineteenth-century Brazil.