Antropofagia no sítio : insólito ficcional e identidade cultural em Peter Pan, de Monteiro Lobato

Abstract

This thesis aims at examining to what extend Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato brings out his children's literature project in the books of the Sítio do Picapau Amarelo series, focusing especially on the novel Peter Pan, released in 1930. The original story by Scottish playwright James Matthew Barrie first appeared in a play in London in 1910, and became a contemporary classic, widely adapted and translated, including film versions by Walt Disney studios. Lobato, who was a famous translator, chose not only to translate the work of Barrie, but to absorb it into his own fiction; in the Brazilian books, the story of the boy who does not grow up is told by the character Dona Benta to her grandchildren; from there on, several fictional properties of the original British story manifest in many instances to the children of São Paulo. This feature is in line with Brazilian modernism writers of 1922, who defended Antropofagia (literary cannibalism), that is, a sharp reinforcement of the Brazilian identity in literature, by absorbing foreign aesthetics and transforming them into something original. Although Lobato was a dissident of that group, and even though his prose for adults was not very modernistic, his books for children are similar, in some ways, to what Oswald de Andrade and Mario de Andrade were producing in the early 1920’s. Based on Lajolo and Ceccantini (2008), Zilberman (1982), Vieira (2008) and White (2011), this paper shows the intertwining fiction of Barrie and Lobato, and how the Brazilian books get to defend a sort of nationalism. In Lobato’s Peter Pan, two supernatural worlds converge: Sítio do Picapau Amarelo and Neverland; thus, this paper analyses both fictional worlds based on fantasy literature theories, such as the works of Todorov (2007), Roas (2014) and García et al. (2007). Moreover, this analysis seeks to define Lobato’s view of Brazilian identity, based on Hall (2005), Said (2011) and theories of nationalism. The conclusion is that Lobato was a cultural translator, who could bring to the country's readers old and new stories that were produced abroad, making them very Brazilian, by digesting them in a cannibalistic way. His fictional influence is, actually, visible until today, as it helped in the formation of a modern Brazilian identity.