Os labirintos fantásticos de Clarice Lispector e Alice Munro

Abstract

Clarice Lispector and Alice Munro are importants writers in their respective countries. In Brazil, Clarice Lispector, beginning to publish in the 1940s, is at the forefront of the transformation of Brazilian writing after the first wave of Modernism. Her work creates intimacy and existential mysteries that defy easy categorization. In turn, in Canada, Alice Munro was part of a generation of writers that began publishing in the 1960s, transforming Canadian literature. Famous for her short-stories, Munro works in a realistic mode using, however, fragmentary compositions. Employing memory in a unique way, she creates enduring mysteries. Although from different cultures, both writers through innovative techniques create texts that are veritable labyrinths, and in doing so transform the 19th century version of the Fantastic. Traditional fantastic literature produced in the nineteenth century, was concurrent with the Romantic movement. It challenged scientific rationalism and bourgeous society. The new Fantastic, on the other hand, written from the 20th century on, especially after World War 2, was transformed by the avant-garde movements, psychoanalysis, surrealism and existentialism. Based on quotidian experiences this fantastic demonstrates the eruption of the unreal (or of the fantastic) but does so obliquely, metaphorically and figuratively. Both Alice Munro s and Clarice Lispector s texts, in fact, go beyond the new fantastic by collapsing the distinction between the real and the fantastic, maintaining a sense of mystery throughout. For our analysis, we use authors as Furtado (1980), Bessière (2009), Carpentier (1985), Chiamp (1980), Jackson (2009), and others.