Fiction at Point Blank Range: Trepidation of Time and Echoes of History in O Marechal de costas, by José Luiz Passos

Abstract

The effort of this reflection is to think how O Marechal de costas, by José Luiz Passos (2016), problematizes and updates the old form of the historical novel. That would necessarily lead to a second, more risky reflection: how literature operates in times of exacerbated political-social tension, and what are the possible literary responses to the clashes of historical time. From the premise that all literary forms are essentially historical, the central hypothesis of this work understands that the historical novel has always operated as a kind of seismograph, which captures the shocks of the time. The novelty of Passos's novel is to intensify this procedure by making a sort of fiction at point-blank range, taking the contemporary element as historical.