Monstros comedores de crianças: figurações e espacialidades

Abstract

This work aims to verify the diversity of monsters that devour children, in addition to establishing a parallel between the novels It: a coisa (2014), by Stephen King and O labirinto do fauno (2019), by Cornelia Funke and Guillermo del Toro. We start from a theoretical articulation about the fantastic, the gothic and the monstrous body. After that, we developed a mosaic of the monstrosities that feed on children and then we tried to analyze the spaces in the aforementioned works, as well as the monstrosities that permeate the fantastic ambience. We rely on researchers and theorists such as: Gaston Bachelard (1996), Jean-Jacques Courtine (2011), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (2000), José Gil (2000), Julio Jeha (2007), Luís Alberto Brandão (2013), Luís da Câmara Cascudo (1986, 2012a, 2012b), Marisa Martins Gama-Khalil (2008, 2010, 2012, 2013), Michel Foucault (1982, 2001, 2008, 2010, 2013), Osman Lins (1976) and Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant (2001). Through a descriptive analytical approach, we seek to investigate the bodies of these monsters and the spatiality in their surroundings. In this interpretive gesture, we understand that these child-eating monsters emerge in cultures with the aim of normalizing, disciplining and end up being one of the most crystallized representations of all times.