O “espírito da prosa” em O filho eterno: a composição do romance de Cristovão Tezza

Abstract

This dissertation approaches Cristovão Tezza's novel The eternal son (2007), from the perspective of the profusion of self-writings in contemporary Brazilian literature, writings characterized by the hybridization of autobiographical and fictional discourses. In this context, the discussion develops between autobiography, romance and self-fiction, the latter a neologism created by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977, with reference to his novel Fils, and which has already undergone many changes as to its meaning, still being discussed whether whether or not it is a specific genre. Thus, the initial proposal is to think of fiction today with regard to hybrid forms and the so-called self-fiction, so that such an approach can enrich the critical reading of the novel The eternal son. Since, in 2012, Cristovão Tezza published the book The spirit of prose: a literary autobiography, in which he exposes and discusses his training as a writer, this work is also considered in this dissertation, since it allows us to identify some of the strategies of (self) re-representation of the author, in his personal and literary trajectory, in the novel The eternal son, which puts on stage the character-writer, a presence so marked in contemporary Brazilian prose. Aiming at a greater understanding of this character, we approached some of the resources used for his composition, such as third-person narration, the mixture of temporal planes and (self) characterizations through emblematic figures of Western literature and culture. We do not wish here to contradict the author's indication (as shown in the book's catalog) about the genre of the work - Brazilian novel -, but rather to investigate the ways in which “autobiographical” data are fictionalized in The eternal son, a hybrid narrative that brings together biographical and fictional elements around the experience of a father and his son with Down syndrome - an experience lived by the empirical author, who, despite presenting biographical facts, opts for the “novel”, leaving mixed indices of autobiography and fiction, making it impossible to gender delimitation and awakening in readers / researchers interest in games of identity / authorial deidentification and in the fictionalization modes of the self in contemporary Brazilian fiction