JOSÉ LINS DO REGO AND THE BILDUNGSROMAN

Abstract

This article analyzes the narrative of Menino de engenho, based on characteristics common to the European Bildungsroman, whose translation to the Brazilian context focuses on the elaboration of the narrator Carlos de Melo's traumas. Considering testimony and narration as a translation of the history of private and public life in 1930s Brazil, the protagonist, to some extent, organizes the traces of the nation's fragmented history, while simultaneously expressing a desire to translate his intimate history, which is formed by a series of failures. We hypothesize that the specificity of José de Lins do Rego's Bildungsroman is shaped by the guilt of the protagonist narrator, whose narration is structured through the confession of his traumas, concurrent with the transition from rural to urban Brazil. In this respect, the 1) privilege of space in the temporal organization of the narration, perceptible through the clash of the two Brazils deeply known to the character: the urban and the rural; 2) the confession of traumas, which occur both in the character's private history and in the historical violence of the transition from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial economy; 3) the intertwining with the narratives of the poor and disadvantaged of the sugar mill, whose stance the narrator oscillates between approach and repulsion, constitute the confession and testimony of the narration.