A representação da morte, do julgamento e da salvação no Teatro Medieval Português de Gil Vicente e seus aspectos residuais no Teatro Contemporâneo Brasileiro de Ariano Suassuna

Abstract

The work proposed here is to analyze the representation of death, judgment and salvation in the Portuguese medieval theater of Gil Vicente, and its residual aspects in the contemporary Brazilian theater of Ariano Suassuna. In the dramaturgy of their respective authors, thinking of God, of life, of the world, of sin, of death, of judgment after death, and of salvation for an eternal life of peace and harmony in the Hereafter was an act of great concern. The earthly life was troubled, full of traps of Evil, fleeting, tormented by bodily desires and complex in the face of the dogmas elaborated and spread by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Thus we can observe both the Vincentian works (Trilogia das Barcas, Auto da Alma, Auto da História de Deus) and those of Ariano Suassuna (Auto de João da Cruz, Auto da Compadecida, Farsa da Boa Preguiça, As Conchambranças de Quaderna) death came to have a complex meaning in the process of Christianization, since the canons of the Catholic Church spread the idea of sin, virtue and sanctified life, as well as the fear of death. Thus, death in these authors would be a ritual of passage, a crossing in which man would be judged and saved for a Beyond of dignification beside God, the angels and saints or, judged and condemned to a world of darkness , sorrow, anguish, sorrow, and wailing beside the Devil and his demons, or else judged and condemned to a place of atonement for sins, waiting for salvation. In this context, the Christian man, both in Gil Vicente and in Ariano Suassuna, began to fight for his salvation, thus doing good deeds, repenting of his sins, doing penances and prayers, leaving in search of a sanctified life in churches, monasteries, deserts, forests, crusades, pilgrimages. All these actions of exemplary life symbolized, in the Middle Ages represented in Vincentian dramaturgy and, in the contemporary Suassuna proceedings, the journey towards a meeting of peace with God, and also the possibility of understanding oneself and living away from sins worldly, out of reach of the temptations of the Devil, seeking to do Good, to the Hereafter, to enjoy the divine virtues. The comparative study of the representation of death, judgment and salvation between the medieval work of Gil Vicente and the contemporary one of Suassuna is carried out by the bias of the Theory of Residuality, in view of this being a work of scrutinizing residues of mentality of a medieval period manifested in a crystallized, updated way, in the way of thinking evidenced in the Suassunian dramaturgy produced and staged in the full twentieth century.