O Grotesco em Famintos: a experiência estética no ensino de literatura

Abstract

One of the principles of the classic art confines it to the ideal of harmony and beauty. Wishing to please his public, the artist became attached to these ideals, respecting the rules of composition, likelihood, moral effects and miming them as determinant elements to represent Good, Beauty and Truth. Uncountable artists and writers, however, living at different times and places, differed a lot from these ideals, using opposite elements on their creation. Considering these differences, this study presents the analysis from Victor Hugo (2002) and Wolfgang Kayser (1986) about the esthetic category named grotesque and, specially, about the meaning of grotesque realism formulated by Mikhail Bakhtin (1993). According to these authors, exaggeration and deformation of the corps are part of the grotesque and lead the reader to achieve a reality that is sometimes hidden. Identified as a constitutive element on the novel Famintos (1962), by the Cape Verdean writer Luis Romano, the grotesque has a double function on this novel: to present hunger as the central theme not only on its social aspects, but also on its effects on the bodies. Parting from these ideas, this research focus on the teaching of literature based on two axes: the analysis of a novel based on the grotesque and the results of its application on a classroom of graduates. This experience took as reference the considerations of Jauss (1994) about the horizon of expectation of a work of art, and Jouve (2013) when he talks about subjective reading. For this reason, this work considers, on reading Famintos (1962), the reader as producer of a second text, built on the first act of reading, which is, in this initial moment, the only result of the reader interpretative and subjective capacity. Concerning these ideas, this essay develops a theoretical empirical research that aims to discuss about the practice of literature in the classroom and analyzes the texts produced by students after reading the novel. This activity was determinant to understand and evaluate the perception of the readers about the aesthetic aspects of literature, and to explore reading as an aesthetic experience, concluding that is possible to abandon some old practices that still resist in teaching literature, as the use of literature to teach grammar or teaching literature based on its historic facts, and also to let down the pre-elaborated interpretation of the manuals.