Perspectivas da memória na tetralogia das minúsculas, de Valter Hugo Mãe

Abstract

This research comprises the themes and issues present in the production of Valter Hugo Mãe, an author of great prominence in the contemporary Portuguese literary panorama. His first four novels, Our Kingdom (2004), The Remorse of Baltazar Serapião (2006), The Apocalypse of the Workers (2008) and The Making Machine Spaniards (2010) are known as the "tetralogy of the lowercase", since all the books, including the author's name, were written without capital letters. In turn, the works present a confrontation of the subject with reality, covering themes that expose culture, gender, religion, work, family and social class. In view of this, this Thesis has as its main objective to analyze, through the perspectives of memory, how the tetralogy presents the configurations of life and identity in its narratives. From the identification of the resources which characterize the modulations of memory and the examination of the constructions of the narrative scenes that collaborate for the relationships established with death throughout the novels, it was sought to attest the aspects that configure the (trans)formations, characterizing, therefore, the characters portrayed in the different social spheres. For such undertaking, this research presents a qualitative approach, of basic nature and exploratory character. As a theoretical contribution, the studies of Carlos Nogueira, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Halbwachs, Joel Candau, Zygmunt Bauman and Edgar Morin were chosen.