Espacialidades no romance experimental brasileiro: Serafim Ponte Grande, de Oswald de Andrade, e Confissões de Ralfo, de Sérgio Sant’Anna

Abstract

This dissertation analyses, under a theoretical and comparative perspective, the space in the experimental novels Serafim Ponte Grande, by Oswald de Andrade, and Confissões de Ralfo: uma autobiografia imaginária, by Sérgio Sant’Anna. In Literary Studies, the category of space has different assumptions. In this dissertation, spatial structure has certain prominence. The novels which constitute the research corpus present strategies of narrative fragmentation. These strategies stress the successive-temporal vector conventionally associated to verbal language and generate an effect of spatialisation. Space, as a means of textual structuring, is associated to montage – a resource which has become common, since the beginning of the 20th century, to many artistic manifestations. Serafim Ponte Grande and Confissões de Ralfo, composed via a montage of fragments, problematize the ideals of totality, unity, and linearity attributed to the book as an object. This problematization leads to the reflection about the constitution of work of art space. The literary spatial structure and the work of art spatial configuration in Serafim Ponte Grande and in Confissões de Ralfo become clear when the urban scenarios in which the novels were produced are considered. The two novels also dialogue with these urban scenarios in a critical manner. To approach all these aspects, it becomes necessary to consider the assumption of space as representation. Although this dissertation analyses two specific aesthetic proposals – Oswald de Andrade’s and Sérgio Sant’Anna’s –, it is guided by an effort of synthesis because the category of space, understood in its conceptual diversity – space as a means of textual structuring, work of art space, and space as representation –, constitutes the point of intersection in comparing the two novels.