The Body Metaphor: The Politics Degradation in João Gilberto Noll’s “Something Urgently”

Abstract

Brazilian Contemporary Literature is traversed by the recent history of the country. That means the literary production from the second part of the Twenty Century until these days has the military dictatorship as one of the most common themes.  Starting from this premise, what interests us is how History is converted into literary material. Then, we chose as investigative object the short story “Something urgently”, by João Gilberto Noll, published in 1980 in the book The blind man and the dancer. Our view on the literary text focuses on bodily imagery as a metaphor of the dictatorial historical-political period: by body degradation, we can see the degradation of the national political body. Such analysis is settled in a theoretical framework based on the axis that joint History and fiction, considering authors such as Paul Ricoeur (2010), Walter Benjamin (2012), and Jeanne Marie Gagnebin (2013). Besides, other theoretical voices are introduced to this study and the analytical practice demands.