RUÍDOS NO SILÊNCIO: A PRESENÇA DOS FANTASMAS NA LITERATURA BRASILEIRA

Abstract

The English literature has, present in its canon, a great variety of histories in which the themes are established round the presence of ghosts. Such beings can appear characterized in diverse forms: sometimes, they are a diffuse presence, ethereal, other times they are beings with definite traces, whose characteristics, generally, reveal the faces of terror or horror. The ghosts, however, belong to a human imaginary that is, direct or indirect, connected to the idea of death that has been constructed through the years , that is why they do not constitute exclusivity of a locality only; their presence is registered in art, in history and in the culture of practically all nations. Although there is a kind of silence in the literary studies area about the image of ghosts in the Brazilian literature, they are present in it, both as part of a haunted memory, connected to a certain past or place, as well as apparitions that integrate certain scenes or carry out some narratives. This paper intends to verify in which ways some of these narrative of the XIX century and beginning of the XX century incorporate in its plots the phantasmagoric image, integrating or not to what is commonly called fantastic literature.