Múltiplas Titubas: entre a história e a literatura

Abstract

This Master’s thesis proposes an imagiological study about the images of Tituba, a woman among the characters persecuted and judged during the episode known as the witch hunt of Salem, occurred in the seventeenth century in the United States. Starting from Pageaux's reading method, according to which the image is a set of words to define the ‘other’ and, in so doing, define itself, I delimit the Tituba's image constructed in the novel Moi, Tituba sorcière... Noire de Salem, of Maryse Condé, in order to discuss whether it reproduces or disturbs the behavior of previous representations. For that, the image of the protagonist is compared to three other images present in three other discursive productions: image I, Tituba in the deposition of Tituba to the court of witch hunt, dated from the seventeenth century; image II, Tituba in Arthur Miller's The Crucible; and Image III, Tituba in Ann Petry's Tituba of Salem Village. Moreover, as the French critic ponders, the imaginary that allowed the elaboration of image is revealed through the study of textual materiality, for that, two short stories are highlighted, "Leçon d'histoire" and "Chemin d'école", both also authored by Condé, with the aim of emphasizing how issues associated with the colonial past appear in the texts listed in this paper, as well as being arranged in the Condenian imaginary.