Sob o signo da esperança: um estudo do conto "A pegha", de Bartolomeu Correia de Melo

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the short story “A pegha” that makes up the book Lugar de estórias (2003) by the author from Rio Grande do Norte, Bartolomeu Correia de Melo, through the notion of hope, in order to verify how the narrative, by bringing to its expression, the social representation of poverty, points to the meaning of hope and new possibilities for life, in the midst of adversity and disappointment. With this objective, the methodology used was qualitative bibliographic, including studies of literary works, articles produced in magazines, book chapters and theoretical references. To do so, it will be necessary to situate Potiguar literature, in order to place Bartolomeu and his work within the Potiguar literary tradition, using Tarcísio Gurgel (2001), Constância Duarte and Diva Macêdo (2011) and Davi Tintino (2023) as theoretical support. To understand the itinerary of the regionalist movement, from the 1930s to the present day, it is necessary to go through the following authors: Herasmo Brito (2016), Chiappinni (1997), Bosi (2015) and Rocha (2016). Next, when presenting Bartolomeu's life and work, we will use Patriota e Filho (2012) as a reference, with texts by Manoel Onofre Jr. (2012), Carlos Newton Jr. (2016), Lourival Holanda (2012) and an interview given by author to Imburana magazine (2010), as well as Rocha's dissertation (2016). When we talk about hope and its characteristics as a virtue for literature and society, we use as references Lourival Holanda (2019), Andrew Solomon (2018), Eagleton (2023) and Pierre Furter (1974) when he explains the dialectic of hope according to Bloch . For the discussion of the short story, the genre that is the subject of our discussion, we will have as a reference to talk briefly about the narrator Walter Benjamin (1987). Alfredo Bosi (1987) will place us within the perspective of the tradition of oral culture that appears within Bartolomeu's work. In the analysis, we observed that hope is not a preview of the future, but an active force in its creation, proving that literature becomes a way to talk about what is behind the facts. Finally, the movement present in the story leads us to see the literary text as a bearer of the passwords of hope.