"Família, história e poética em Roa Bastos

Resumo

We are studying the construction of the “family novel” in the autobiographical and autofictional texts of Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2007) as these accounts highlight relevant aspects of the Paraguayan writer’s poetics. The weight of written, authoritarian tradition, the place of orality, bilingualism, changes of voice in the text, and the presence of the premodern in the modernist experimentation are aspects that are manifested in the plot of Roa Bastos’s family novel. The account of the nuclear family, in which the personal history of the writer interweaves with the cultural history of the nation, warrants a writing project located amidst strong cultural meaning and moral choices. The family story, which is organized according to the account of the encounter of the “two lineages” (paternal and maternal) and which develops as opposing figures “fear of the written word” [“grafofobia”] and “fascination with the printed word” superimposed and yet complementary allows the author to engage in profound enquiry regarding the elements of the formation of local culture. This study will engage with the criticism that investigated the family narrative in Latin America, the connections of such narratives with national histories and with the poetic formulations of the continent (Doris Sommer, Sylvia Molloy, Margarita Saona).