O filho de mil homens em desassossego: leveza, polifonia e alteridade na obra de Valter Hugo Mãe

Abstract

This research focuses on the theoretical and critical analysis of the novel O filho de mil homens (2011), by Valter Hugo Mãe, steered by literary studies focused on the novel genre and contemporary Portuguese language prose. We consider the author as one of the ethical and aesthetic heirs of the generation of Lusitanian writers after the 25th of April 1974 Revolution and, therefore, a brief panorama was carried out on the prose of that generation of authors, to observe and discuss the artistic and historical conditions that came together in the development of Mãe's work. For a meticulous analysis of our corpus, we use the idea of lightness, proposed by Italo Calvino as one of the Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988). Furthermore, O filho de mil Homens is constituted as a polyphonic prose, a model of an “invention of disquiet”, which discusses current issues, according to Ana Clara Medeiros (2017). Beyond to the critical fortune specialized in the Lusitanian novel of the 20th and 21st century, access to the theoretical contributions of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) on Dialogism, Polyphony and Popular Culture was essential to think about Mãe's poetics. We emphasize that, in our proposal, the concept of polyphony (Bakhtinian) establishes relationships with the concept of multiplicity (Calvinian). Furthermore, a journey was undertaken through the Book of the Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa and his semi-heteronyms, published posthumously in the 1980s. Pessoa’s unfinished text was used here as a theoretical support to think about poetic prose, of linguistic frenzy and malaise (1930), the latter concept understood from the considerations of Sigmund Freud, a relevant theorist in this dissertation. Finally, we discuss the alterity relations presented in the novel, in a dialogue with Roland Barthes and his amorous discourse (1977), about what the characters in the plot call “the love of the unhappy”.