Uma heresia nos trópicos: a biblioteca proibida de Branca Dias

Abstract

In the play The Holy Inquiry(O Santo Inquérito, in Portuguese),by Dias Gomes, there is a gallery of protagonists representing the Brazilian people: the inquisitors, the soldiers, the Christian-new father, the revolutionary fiancé and the reader- permeated by history and legend - Branca Dias, who is condemned and killed at the fire for the crime of heresy. This narrative was written during the beginning of the Civil-Military Dictatorship in Brazil, however, allegorically, it alludes to the presence of the Court of the Holy Office during the colonial period. This thesis aimed at analyzing not only the aesthetics of Dias Gomes, but also the elements inferred through the theatrical text, such as the questions that involve the women and their education, the contact of the feminine with the forbidden ideas and the censorship in dark times. In addition, it was possible to ascertain Branca Dias’s real crime: the possession of a small library and, consequently, the existence of heresy in the works read by the Gomes’ protagonist and the effects of the act of reading in the construction of the identity of this crypto-jewish. Furthermore, It was possible to investigate the relation between the practice of reading by Miguel de Cervantes' character, Don Quixote, and Branca Dias, taking into account the diabolical vision of the book by reading for these subjects discursive and the pleasure provided by the practice of reading. While manipulating their books, these individuals are surrounded by the thirst for knowledge, which makes them dangerous to society: the first one for being stimulated to transfer the adventures he experienced in the fictional universe into his reality; the second one, for opposing and becoming resistance to any form of totalitarianism. Both are transformed by the action of reading.