A Rainha do Ignoto: hipnotismo, espiritismo e o fantástico prismático de Emília Freitas

Abstract

The object of this research is Emília Freitas’ novel A Rainha do Ignoto. Written in 1899, this novel has been studied from various angles in different academic works. The purpose of this thesis is to address a point of view that has not yet been explored in previous studies, namely the influence of hypnotism and the spiritist doctrine in A Rainha do Ignoto, looking at the presence of spiritism and studies relating to hypnotism in 19th century fantastic narratives. The intention is to demonstrate, on the one hand, how the parascientific pair hypnotism/spiritism is present in the novel and, on the other hand, that this presence close to scientificism intensifies the fantastic character of the work, which is too related to the different focalizations of the narrative. Thus, the manifestation of a prismatic fantastic in the narrative is presented, that is, the possibility of associating Freitas’ work with different strands of the fantastic, considering the question of perspective within the narrative text. We carried out research in the Newspaper and Journal Digital Archive of the Brazilian National Library and exploratory reading of bibliography related to Emília Freitas and her work, as well as the themes of animal magnetism, hypnotism and spiritualism. The theoretical basis for this work includes mainly the studies of Mesmer (2007), Figueiredo (2007), Doyle (1995), Kardec (2013), Del Priore (2014), Freud (2020), Genette (2017), Todorov (1992) e Roas (2014). We conclude that, in A Rainha do Ignoto, the spiritualism is present both through mediumistic phenomena and through moral and philosophical aspects of the doctrine. Furthermore, a prismatic fantastic appears in the narrative, that is, the simultaneous manifestation of different aspects of the fantastic according to different perspectives.