O jogo da metaficção de Um crime delicado: a prosa experimental de Sérgio Sant’Anna e uma narrativa produtora de simulacros

Abstract

In the book Um Crime Delicado (1997) by Sérgio Sant’Anna, the narrator Antônio Martins is a theater critic who sets out to write an autobiography, recounting his involvement with a crippled and mysterious girl, Inês. The narrative develops as the protagonist recalls the events that culminate in a “hypothetical crime” committed by him and that ultimately lead to his acquittal from justice “due to insufficient evidence”. As the story goes, Martins constantly reflects on the narrative process and the construction of the novel. Thus, the narratives in a downward spiral in the book, establishes a metafictional game that produces simulacra about the narrated story. The studies about the book guided the following questions: how metafiction and its simulacra are constituted in this narrative, how the book is situated and points out trends in the literary context of postmodernist contemporaneity, how the deconstruction of the novel and the concept of open work take place in the text, among other inquiries. This work’s general objective, based on the novel and the experimental prose by Sant’Anna (1997), is to present an analysis of the metafictional narrative and its simulacra and the nuances that point to trends in contemporary literature produced in Brazil. This research justifies itself by the need for scientific investigation to understand how literature reverberates life and human activity under its many perspectives, actions and problems. This is a research under a hypothetical-deductive method, a qualitative approach of an explanatory bibliographic disposition, whose material divides into four parts. The first one outlines the initial considerations, the presentation of the discussed problem, as well as a brief exposition about the author and his book. The second, debates the points that place this novel in the postmodernist perspective, based on the theoretical contributions of Schøllhammer (2009), Perrone-Moisés (1998; 2016), Jameson (1991; 1997), Hutcheon (1984; 1991), Barthes (2004; 2006) etc. The third part discusses the elements of fictional creation, with contributions from Bernardo (2010), Eco (1991), Bakhtin (1997; 2002), Baudrillard (1991), among others, in order to investigate the instances of Sant'Anna's prose (1997) and its metafictional narrative. The fourth part analises the game of metafiction as a producer of simulacra in the novel, as well as the layers and pieces that involve its narrative, dialoguing with Hutcheon (1984; 1991), Baudrillard (1991), Gass (2000), Pereira (2010) and others, which enable the study of aspects of contemporary literature and its effects. In general terms, we conclude that the metafictional language finds in postmodernism a fertile ground to transgress the classic notions of literature. Sant’Anna (1997) points out in his prose the main trends of contemporary Brazilian literature. Through metafiction, the author creates a game with his reader and a simulacrum reality. The novel develops through several pieces that, when moved, expose different layers of narratives, which multiply in other narratives, unfold in another novel and literature turns to itself.