Death, celebration, and satire : sense of humor and social criticism in "O Defunto Inaugural: Relato de um Fantasma" ["The Inaugural Death: A Ghost's Story"], by Aníbal Machado

Vol.40,No.2(2019)

Diana Simões

https://doi.org/10.5817/ERB2019-2-5

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/141591

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Abstract
Death in literature is a construction, a representation of an abstract concept. In a mimetic scenario, dead people are unable to speak and, certainly, unable to write books. However, dead voices have been used for centuries to tell stories, since the Greek heritage of Lucian of Samosata's Dialogues of the Dead (II century) to Machado de Assis's Brazilian novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881), all the way into the twenty-first century. Through the lens of the fantastic, this article analyses the use of fictional posthumous narration in the short story "O Defunto Inaugural" ["The Inaugural Death"], by Aníbal Machado, which challenges the narrative conventions of verisimilitude by presenting an impossible character according to the laws of nature. I question the overall reason a dead voice is more appropriate to tell a particular story, and challenge the limited scope of Tzvetan Todorov's definition of the fantastic by contrasting it with Rosemary Jackson's broader approach to the fantastic as a type of literature productive in conveying the uncanny feeling of displacement in relation to certain social and political systems. I highlight the potential of posthumous narration as a means to uncover and discuss relevant contemporary issues of personal, political, and social identity, because, as a transcendent figure, this dead man has the authority to speak the truth and reveal secrets. Death provides a safe space to tell a side of the story that they kept silent while alive.

Keywords:
posthumous narration; fantastic; Unheimlich; abjection; death

Pages:
49–64
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