In the pan of Piaimã – giants of Rabelais and Mário de Andrade

Abstract

It wasn’t long before Macunaíma, Mário de Andrade’s anthropophagic rhapsody, was placed by its critics in the same tradition of François Rabelais’ novelistic satires. In the manner of Gargantua and Pantagruel, the catalyzing element of the moral transformations undergone by the hero without qualities of Brazilian modernism is Piaimã, a giant who devours men. Digested by Gargantua, a group of pilgrims becomes the satire of the great religious missions; under Pantagruel’s tongue, the narrator Alcofribas discovers a new civilization; “chopped up into twenty times thirty little pork rinds”, Macunaíma irreversibly integrates himself into the Pauliceia desvairada, speaking English, dealing in arms, ammunition and alcohol.