A retórica católica e o homoerotismo em Um animal de Deus, de Walmir Ayala

Abstract

The work of Walmir Ayala, since its beginning in the early 20th Century, has given attention to certain themes that are urgent to contemporary readers: the social life, the presence of art, homosexuality and religion. Therefore, in the face of these themes, this research pursuits to articulate a possible interpretation of Ayala’s single homoerotic novel, Um animal de Deus, with a few commonplaces from the catholic rhetoric. The main goal of this work is to point a possible interpretation for the result of the mix between two different themes, which, in their own, seem to develop, in the course of the novel, some arguments that goes beyond their most known questions. In a certain way, the author formulates, in his novel, an interpretation of different Christian arguments about sexuality, in pursuit of an answer that harmonizes, in a way to not eliminate the intricacies of each side, the homosexual experience and the belief in the Christian tenets. That’s why we justify our choice to work with the rhetoric, which covers the questions concerning the rules of the construction of the discourse, conjoined with certain aspects of the Cultural Studies, which investigate the questions related to identity and homoeroticism.