Faces brutalizadas na literatura brasileira: configurações do anti-herói na escrita de Ana Paula Maia

Abstract

The present thesis aims to study the construction of the anti-heroism in the work of the carioca writer Ana Paula Maia. Her writing presents marginalized beings, men on the edge of the social abyss, fighting like animals to survive in an urban system of brutalization and inhumanity. Refuse-men, garbage, violence, rawness in the human relationships, lack of empathy, exploitation, decay and death are the central elements in the narrative written by Maia. All these elements are potentialized by the kind of aesthetic elaboration that the author makes out of the characters: the protagonists of the novels are urban anti-heroes, garbagemen, firemen, butchers, bodies cremators. They are the brutalized faces. Starting with the analysis of the trilogy of the brutes, completed by three novels: Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos, O trabalho sujo dos outros e Carvão Animal, the research tries to understand the kind of anti-hero presented on these works, beginning with the hypothesis that he is a hybrid construct, a result of the fusion of aesthetic currents, two from nineteenth century and one from the twentieth century: the Naturalism, the Romanticism and the Pulp fiction/Pop literature. We defend that, by investing in the fusion of influences so different, Maia inserts in the landscape of the Brazilian contemporary literature a new aesthetic type, very few exploited by other writers of her generation. So, the aim of this study is to comprehend how these different influences are combined to create the anti-hero in her novels.