Pelos jardins de Lygia Fagundes Telles

Abstract

The present dissertation proposes to analyze the Pregnant Image of the Garden in the works of Brazilian author Lygia Fagundes Telles. In the afterword of Os Contos (2018), Walnice Nogueira Galvão postulates the concept of a Pregnant Image as an approach to the narrative elements and their meanings in the Brazilian writer’s prose. According to our analysis of the selected short stories, the setting of the Garden acts as a Pregnant Image, as it is responsible for unveiling meanings and causing uncanny outbreaks, being a decisive element of Lygia Fagundes Telles’ literary composition. The initial framework of our studies were the History of gardens, since the beginning of humankind, and a survey of all the author’s stories in which this setting is present. In the second chapter, we thoroughly analyzed the following four short stories in which the Garden functions as a Heterotopic place that establishes the Fantastic: “Que se chama solidão”, “A mão no ombro”, “Lua crescente em Amsterdã” and “Anão de jardim”. Our analysis is based on the theories proposed by Remo Ceserani (2006), Lenira Marques Covizzi (1978), Filipe Furtado (1980), Michel Foucault (2001), Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari (1995), Cássio Hissa (2002), Marisa Martins Gama-Khalil (2012, 2013, 2017, 2018), Esdras Arraes (2019, 2020), Sandra Carvalho (2016), Patrícia Paiva (2004), Santiago Beruete (2016), Vera Tietzmann Silva (1984, 2009), Nilton Resende (2007, 2016, 2019) and Fábio Lucas (1990). Based on these scholars’ works, we comprehend how Telles builds her gardens as an Uncanny space to portray our prosaic world and our conditions as human beings.