O caso Macobeba: um personagem e suas refigurações entre o mito e a literatura

Abstract

This thesis begins with the analysis of the series of texts about the monster Macobeba, published in the newspaper from Pernambuco A Província, from April to September 1929, written by José Mathias, Júlio Bello’s pen name. Such publications were received in different manners by different social strata, producing, consequently, two ways of reception and refiguration of the monstruous character: the literate and the popular. In the first of them, based on the analysis of texts written by notable authors of Brazilian modernism, such as Mário de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos, Jorge de Lima, Cavalcanti Proença and Joaquim Cardozo, it is possible to realize that they create their own versions of the monster. Such versions are pretty different from the original one, making it possible, therefore, to classify them as “authorial refigurations”. The second way is composed of more diverse and varied texts, which are similar in the way they present the monster without mentioning its original creator, nor the newspaper A Província. In the publications that compose it, the creature is constantly referred to as an autonomous being, which dispenses with its original creator, thus configuring the “survival” of the monster. Considering the autonomy achieved by the monster in the second way, its presence in a popular and anonymous tradition, it can be said that Macobeba reached the “state of myth”