Graças a Deus, tudo é mistério : a religiosidade como regionalidade em Sagarana, de Guimarães Rosa

Abstract

This master’s thesis analyzes short stories of Sagarana, written by João Guimarães Rosa, from the perspective of religiosity and regionality. It aims to demonstrate how religiosity contributes to the construction of the characters, the ambience and the plot, revealing traces of the regionality of the Brazilian countryside known as “sertão”. The culture of the “sertão” imagined by Guimarães Rosa is connected to the elements of the religious culture, so that the religiosity comes out of the most different circumstances in the work. In the nine short stories of Rosa's first book, the religiosity erupts in the collective imaginary. This can be observed in places and people’s names, superstitions, rituals, popular festivals and mentions of God and saints found in Sagarana. Thus, religiosity becomes one of the cultural components that best contributes to the composition of the regionality represented in the work, because it dialogues directly with the local beliefs and traditions, using the emotional aspects that often act as a force of the characters and maintain the dynamicity of the plots. During the analysis, the observations of this research are based on studies of literature, culture, regionality and religiosity. It is believed that religiosity, as a cultural manifestation, favors the structuring of the ambience of the “sertão” in Guimarães Rosa’s fiction and the way in which the characters deal with religiosity collaborates to substantiate the cultural field represented in the work.