Cenas da encruzilhada: A representação mítico/religiosa africana em Viva o povo brasileiro e Tocaia Grande: a face obscura

Abstract

This paper studies the mythical/religious representation in the novels Viva o Povo Brasileiro by João Ubaldo Ribeiro (1984) and Tocaia Grande by Jorge Amado (1986), with the objective to realize, in the making of such work, the imprint of the African cultural root contribution, most of all the mythical narratives linked to the language of the Nagô tradition: the Itans. This study is settled in the consideration of the dialog relations among the myths, expressed in the typical and oral practice performances of the Afro-Brazilian religions, and its literary reborn in the contemporaneous writing production. Categories such as, crossings, oral practice, performance, ancestors, will be used as tools of reading according to theoretical, critical and historical postulates from African and Afro-Brazilian culture, such as Juana Elbein dos Santos (1986), João José Reis (1991), Paul Zumthor (1993), Laura Padilha (1995), Leda Maria Martins (1997), Eduardo David Oliveira (2006) , Amarino Oliveira de Queiroz (2007), Rui do Carmo Póvoas(2007); we intend to demonstrate how the African mythical/religious knowledge preserved by the rituals and re-dimensioned by writing constitutes a mark of the African cultural resistance after the Diaspora. In this context of cultural mixture, there is a clash of dualities in conflict: memory and history, sacred and profane, oral and written, individual and collective, passivity and resistance.