The Amazonian Marvellous, Poetics of Alterity

Abstract

In general, the research of the traditional narratives with a background of the Marvellous are based on the real dichotomy x fabulous, natural x supernatural, verossimel x unlikely, as we read in the postulations of Todorov (1975), Bessière (1974), Max Lüthi (1992), Hetmann (1982), among others. However, when such theories are confronted with the narrative corpus collected in the Amazon Region of Pará, they are insufficient to deal with the reception of the marvellous in this territory, since such narratives do not stand in the antinomy indicated above. Starting from this observation, the category of alterity was chosen, according to Victor Bravo's proposition, thus suggesting a possible key to its study. Thus, reviewing the established texts around the genre, such as Introduction to fantastic literature (T. Todorov), Das europäische Volksmärchen (M. Luthi), Le récit fantastique (I. Bessière), on the one hand, and, on the other, another, the collection of narratives from the Pará Amazon carried out by the Project O Imaginário nas Formas Oral Narrativas Populares da Amazônia Pará, the article highlights the category of alterity as a term of central importance for the reading of such narratives.