Poéticas do mal na literatura brasileira: o gótico em Fronteira, de Cornélio Penna

Abstract

From its origin in the British literary scene of the mid-eighteenth century, the Gothic spread through the literature of many countries and, due to its great adaptability, allowed the representation of the fears and anxieties of numerous societies, unveiling the cracks of the projects of formation of these nations. Among its main elements, Gothic presents i) a pessimistic and skeptical worldview; ii) the presence of loci horribiles, i.e., terrifying and oppressive narrative spaces; iii) physically or morally monstrous characters, and iv) the theme of the past returning to haunt the present. This study aims to analyze Fronteira (1935), Cornélio Penna’s (1896-1958) first novel, in the light of Gothic conventions and present it as an exemplary work of the Brazilian Gothic. As theoretical support regarding the transnational and transhistorical scopes of the Gothic tradition, we consider the seminal works of Fred Botting (2005), David Stevens (2012), and David Punter (2013); to explore the processes that allowed the transformations of Gothic in Latin America, we rely on the considerations of Enrique Ajuria Ibarra (2014), Justin Edwards (2016), and Sandra Vasconcelos (2016), to then formulate our reflections on the Brazilian category based on the studies of Fernando Monteiro de Barros (2014; 2016; 2020), Júlio França (2018), and João Pedro Bellas (2021). Finally, we undertake a narratological analysis of Penna’s work and exam the typically Brazilian themes we find in Fronteira.