Entre a opressão e a resistência: a construção da personagem Sherezade em Vozes do deserto, de Nélida Piñon

Abstract

The novel Vozes do deserto, by Nélida Piñon (2004), was built around Scherezade, taken from the Book of the Thousand and One Nights and presented as the audacious heroine who manages to save herself and the other young women of Baghdad from the punishment of death decreed by the Caliph. The objective of this study is to analyze the character Scherezade, considering the limits of oppression and resistance, in the context of female representations. And specifically, examine the articulation between the Šahrāzād of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights and the Scherezade of Vozes do deserto; describe the condition of women in Arab-Muslim society; and to investigate Scherezade's transgressive behavior, which moves her to a contemporary space of resistance. This is qualitative bibliographic research, whose scope was divided into four sections. In the first one, the writer Nélida Piñon, whose production occupies the literary universe with vivacity, was situated in the literary scene. In the second, the intertextual points between the Arabic classic and the Brazilian novel were examined, based on the theoretical contributions of Genette (2006), Kristeva (2005), Hutcheon (1985), among others. In the third section, a survey of historiographical sources about the Arab civilization and the Islamic religion was carried out, based on the studies of Hourani (2007), Demant (2013), Bouhdiba (2006), Armstrong (2001), Saadawi (2002), in addition to passages from the Qur'an (2004), which deal with the female body. Finally, the role of Scherezade in the (re)reading of Piñon (2004) was investigated, according to the foundations of Feminist Criticism theorized by Hollanda (1994), Queiroz (1997), Showalter (1994), Lauretis (1994), and Zolin (2009). In general terms, the character Scherezade reveals abilities to promote plausible changes in the context in which she is inserted, by transgressing social impositions on women, such as marriage and motherhood, in favor of her freedom, independence and recognition as a subject of history.