Cicatrizes urbanas: narrativas da violência na ficção detetivesca

Abstract

This thesis develops an investigation into the detective genre and anti-detective, focusing primarily on Brazilian contemporary literary productions and their connections with the narratives of violence. With that, I seek to understand and characterize an aesthetic of violence in contemporary literature, which has always been present in detective fiction to a greater or lesser degree, and to contribute to the discussions concerning violence and its social implications in contemporary times. The investigative method used in this study examines, at first, the conventions of classic detective and anti-detective stories in productions in English and how violence is represented in them, using this as a point of reference for the analysis of contemporary Brazilian works of this genre. The main foreign works I analyze are “The murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), by Edgar Allan Poe; The high window (1943), by Raymond Chandler; “La muerte y la brújula” (1944), by Jorge Luis Borges and City of glass (1985), by Paul Auster. As for Brazilian works, they are O mysterio (1921), by Medeiros e Albuquerque, Coelho Neto, Afrânio Peixoto and Viriato Corrêa; O canto da Sereia – um noir baiano (2002), by Nelson Motta; O Xangô de Baker Street (1995), by Jô Soares; “A lei” (2007), by André Sant’Anna; and O invasor (2011), by Marçal Aquino. The last two ones tend to more specific aesthetics within that genre, whose characteristics fall in the narratives of violence, which are explored in the second part in this study. My analytical and argumentative bases are the hyper-realistic effects these narratives show, the reception of these by the readers and utopian / dystopian questions that may arise. Accordingly, as a result of the analysis of the narratives of violence, I argue that dystopian hyperrealism may cause sensory effects and exaggerated representation of "real", redefining it with the purpose of awakening (or revive) the perception of historical world.