The Horrific Metonymy in Fiction: the Sui Generis Conception of Monsters in “Clear Conscience” by Cruz e Sousa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1984-1124.i39p316-335Keywords:
Horror literature, Brazilian literature, Cruz e Sousa, Monster theoryAbstract
This paper discusses a particular strategy of horror literature to conceive its monstruous characters: the horrific metonymy (CARROLL, 1999). After surveying possible representational shapes of the fictional monstrous, we decided to utilize this specific mode of the horrific metonymy, the most appropriate for our case, to critically analyze a short story by author João da Cruz e Sousa, well-known for being one of the arcanes of brazilian simbolism, about a cruel slave owner and the many horrors he sponsored. Without significantly diverging from a consolidated understanding of the “monster” classical category, our aim is to exemplify one of the ways of featuring the monstruous in brazilian literature, in which it has always to be furtively expressed in order to avoid the yoke of a critical and historiographical tradition that knowningly valorizes realistic and “documentary” criterions.
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