Entre o real e o ficcional: a cidade de Teresina sob o olhar de Fontes Ibiapina em Palha de Arroz

Abstract

The novel Palha de arroz (2007), by Piauí writer Fontes Ibiapina, tells the story of the arsons that ravaged Teresina during the Estado Novo period in the 1940s. Therefore, the present research's general objective is to analyze how the intersection of history and fiction is constructed in Palha de arroz (2007) by Fontes Ibiapina, and the spatial representation of the city of Teresina in the novel's cover art. As specific objectives, we seek to propose an intersection between the real and the fictional in the Palha de Arroz narrative; to understand in what ways the reconstitution of reality in the novel, based on the literary recreation of the past, opens up possibilities for the recovery of dissident voices that have been relegated to the fringes of the official historical narrative; and understand the spatial representation of the city of Teresina on the book covers of Palha de arroz, as paratexts that help to bring together the historiographical and literary discourses. In this way, we seek to answer the following guiding questions: In what ways do the proximity marks of the real and the fictional, as well as the spatial representation of the city of Teresina, integrate fields of signification in Palha de Arroz? How the paratextual elements analyzed can contribute to the construction of meanings in Palha de arroz? Based on these questions, we aim to explore how the city's past is revived in Palha de arroz through the potential links between fiction and history, articulating plural interpretations of such past. Also, the external elements that make up the local narrative also add to the construction of meanings, hence presenting themselves as interdiscursive and mobilizing devices that subsidize the work's legibility. In terms of methodology, this is a bibliographic research based on studies by authors such as Baumgarten (2000), Aínsa (2003), Costa Lima (1989; 2006), Iser (2002), Lins (1976), Lukács (2000; 2011), Pesavento (2002; 2006), Reis (2010), White (1994), Genette (1982; 2009), among others. Therefore, Palha de arroz goes beyond literary belletrism along the lines of traditional novels since it mobilizes displacement spaces based on the possibility of intersecting fictional and historical discourses.