A ficcionalização da Revolta dos Malês em cinco romances brasileiros

Abstract

This doctoral thesis investigates its theme from interstices and emergent contingencies. It proposes a comparative of five oeuvres of Brazilian authors about the Malê revolt, an insurrection of black people in 1835, in the city of Salvador-BA, Brazil. Taking place during the Brazilian regency period, this freedom movement was a landmark within the scope of actions led by black people against slavery. Given its nature of colective freedom, combined with a religious premisez, the Malê revolt (the term most commonly used to refer to this event) was one the great articulation of enslaved grupos in Brazilian history. Since fictionalization is a bridge between past and present, it weaves a vibrant diaologue between historical reality and creative imagination. Through the ludic recombination of documented elements, authors build mnew narratives that revisit and reinterpret historical events. In this way, authors who would otherwise be confined to the cold register of archives gain humanity and a voice, allowing the public to explore the deeper nuances and meanings of that crucial historical moment. The analysed works are: Malês: a insurreição das senzalas (1933), by Pedro Calmon; A Noite dos Cristais (1999), by Luís Fulano de Tal; Um Defeito de Cor (2007), by Ana Maria Gonçalves; Sobre as Vitórias que a História não Conta (2016), by André Luís Soares; and, Sina Traçada (2016), by Custódia Wolney. Amongst the approaches of this study, there is the insertion of real characters in historical romance through the vantage points of political representation (Kilomba, 2020; hooks, 2019), the search for national identity through memory (Cuti, 2009), and the scientific recism depicted in Brazilian literary criticism (Santos, 2015). By means of a bibliographic research, the historians João José Reis (2003) and Joel Rufino (2013) help us with the historical fine details that surronds the Malê revolt. Also, Conceição Evaristo (2009), Cuti (2010), Ella Shohat & Robert Stam (2006), and Fernanda Miranda (2019) help us with the premisses regarding Brazilian black authorship as a producer of political, social and historical discourse through its narratives. In this way, it is aimed to contribute to the studies of Afro-Brazilian literature regarding the process of humanization of Black characters and to foster new research on the Malês in our literature.