Memória e ficção em A Saga de um Urucuiano, de João Naves de Melo

Abstract

In this research, we intend to investigate the different meanings of the name João Naves de Melo, understood as author, narrator and protagonist of A Saga de um Urucuiano (2003). Initially, it was tried to present who is this author and what is the universe of his work, marked by an obstinate attempt to delineate the customs, traditions, folklores and histories linked to the north-western sertão. Then, we take as the main object of study this text, which could be considered the point of confluence of the work of João Naves de Melo, since it tries to reconstitute through the thread of memory the original experience in the life of the author. At the end of his adolescence, the narrator departs for a civilizing mission as a modern bandeirante, creating with the people and with the Northern region of Minas Gerais a relation of belonging. A saga de um Urucuiano is constituted by a crisscross of genres, traditions, narrative structures and symbolic forms, from the memorialist texts to the Nordic literature, passing through the brazilian regionalist tradition. Finally, we discuss Naves’s saga, understood in its own and metaphorical sense, describing the protagonist’s exogenous and endogenous route through the places which will define linguistically and subjectively his identity construction. The memories of Naves occupy an interstitial position in the diffuse perimeter of self writings, being moved by the narrative of a series of geographic and internal displacements, responsible for altering the axis of the identity formation of the narrator-character and to promote the transmutation of his own personal incarnation of the bandeirante armed not with a sword, but with a pen.