Encantados do fundo do rio: cosmogonia, residualidade e imaginário poetizante-estetizador em Identidade Cabocla, de Alfredo Saunier

Abstract

This master’s thesis proposes a panoramic study of cosmogony, residuality, and the poetic-aesthetic imaginary based on the enchanted creatures of the riverbed starring in the narratives “The flirtatious dolphin”, “The she-dolphin”, and “Boiúna: the Big Snake”, from Cabocla Identity (2013), by the Parintins writer Alfredo Saunier. Thus, we organize the research objectives into the following sequence: investigate the issues of cosmogony, residuality, and the poetic-aesthetic imaginary in the narratives of Cabocla Identity; understand the cosmogony in the imaginary of Amazonian culture through the narratives of Cabocla Identity; present Amazonian literature from the perspective of residual studies and identifying the poetic-aesthetic imaginary based on the enchanted creatures of the riverbed. To further develop the discussions, we use readings based on the Amazonian Imaginary and Culture, Myth and Imaginary, Comparative Literature, and Literary and Cultural Residuality. Regarding Amazonian Imaginary and Culture, we adopt the perspectives of Loureiro (1995), Krüger (2003), Fraxe (2007; 2004), Maués (2006; 2005), Barbosa (2011), Sicsú (2013), Santos (2017), and Simas (2021). Regarding Myth and Imaginary, we use as main authors Barreto (2021; 2013), Baniwa (2019; 2016), Vidal (2009), Krenak (2022), Cordeiro (2017), Laplatine and Trindade (1997), Durand (2001), and Pitta (2017). Regarding Comparative literature, we highlight the perceptions of Carvalhal (1994), Nascimento (2014), Pontes (2022; 2017; 2015), and Silva and Martins (2020). The analysis of Cabocla Identity reveals that the river behaves in culture as a consecrated place of creation, capable of generating a plane in the riverbed inhabited by the enchanted ones, which find ways of manifesting themselves in the Amazonian folks’ reality. The aesthetic image of the enchanted Dolphin, She-Dolphin, and Big Snake as beings of admirable beauty or enormous size implies that the Amazonian imaginary is poeticizing-aestheticizing, as its material base is nature, which reveals them, aestheticizes them into the Amazonian reality. Therefore, these beings are configured as residues of other Amazonian indigenous peoples and take new guises into the riverside cabocla culture.