VISAGENS E ASSOMBRAÇÕES NO RECIFE VELHO: SOBRE O FANTÁSTICO, A ALEGORIA E A HISTÓRIA

Abstract

The present article seeks to reflect upon the theoretical conditioning factors of fantastic literature and how the allegory helps in the understanding of contemporaneity. The problematization of this trope in the book Introdução à literatura fantástica, by Tzvetan Todorov, and the ascension of the allegorical resource as a category of hermeneutics, anticipated in Origem do drama trágico alemão, by Walter Benjamin, allow us to glimpse the fantastic with a greater sense and aesthetical amplitude. In the light of this perspective, the analysis of the report “No Riacho da Prata”, by Gilberto Freyre, has proved to be basic for restoring importance to the history in the appreciation of that literary genre. Opposing to what Todorov assumes, we conclude that, by attributing meaning to the emanations of the context, the reception of the odd and the supernatural contained in the text becomes viable, keeping the reader’s hesitation before an unexplained event when apprehended by the laws of reality.