A desumanização: From Mourning to Melancholia in the Novel by Valter Hugo Mãe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21165/el.v45i3.613Keywords:
A desumanização, mourning, melancholia.Abstract
This paper aims at showing how the character Halldora, narrator-protagonist of the novel A desumanização (2013) by Valter Hugo Mãe, has her feelings changed from sorrow related to mourning to melancholia, caused by other losses which take place after her twin sister’s death: the love of her mother, which becomes rejection; the loss of her innocence, starting his sexual life when she was still a child; a son’s loss; and mainly the loss of her own identity, once the specular relation between the I and the other, with respect to twins, is even stronger. So, this study is based on Sigmund Freud’s distinctions between mourning and melancholia, published in a paper in 1917. It is concluded that the route of the novel’s protagonist converge with the premises of melancholia postulated by him. According to Urania Tourinho Peres (2011), melancholia has been one of the main characteristics of the contemporary subject. Therefore, this study is interested in understanding how recent literature has approached the issue.
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References
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