FROM THE IMPERIAL “BARON” TO THE WINDS OF THE “ANGÉLICA” REPUBLIC

the literary phenomenon as a place of memory in “O Monstro”, by Josué Montello

Abstract

The article seeks to examine the construction of space in Josué Montello's O Monstro as a place of memory, based on the fictional environment represented by the home of the character Jerônimo. To this end, we adopt the conceptions of home, by Relph (2014) and house by Bachelard (2008), of topophilia, crowding and spaciousness, by Tuan (2012; 2013), of memory, by Halbwachs (1990), Pollak (1992) and Ricoeur (2007), and Nora's place of memory (1993), as well as Candido's (2009) look at the fictional character and the sense of reality. The narrative is about the story of Jerônimo, a convinced bachelor, who leaves Bahia to Rio de Janeiro in search of a peaceful life as a civil servant, a peace that is shaken by the arrival of his mother, Angélica, who changes the whole dynamics of his life, his home and his direction’s life. It works on the idea of the metaphorical construction of a dispute between an imperial reminiscence and the new republican air, a context in which the work is located in Brazilian historical time, seeking to observe how the space of Jerônimo’s home corresponds to the construction of a place of imperial memory, in opposition to the alterations undertaken in this environment by his mother.