Mito e epopéia na modernidade: uma leitura de “O Nativo de Câncer”, de Ruy Barata

Abstract

This thesis analyses O Nativo de Câncer, by Ruy Barata, which was first published as a fragment in 1960. We aim to study the mythological and epic elements present in the composition of the poem O Nativo de Câncer. In the first chapter we will study the myth by presenting the ideas of Mircea Eliade about its the occurrence in the traditional societies through the text Myth and Reality. We will also present Roland Barthes’ thinking in the text Mythologies, which approaches the ways myth occurs in the contemporaneity. Additionally we will draft the concepts about Epic by contextualizing its occurrence in Greece and by indicating its configurations, which will be contextualized posteriorly. In the second chapter we will deal with the narratives of naturalists and studious who traveled to Amazon in the last centuries, so that we comprehend how the foundation myths occur in the region and how Ruy Barata tries to untie them through his modern poetry. In the third chapter we will analyze the two chants of the poem O Nativo de Câncer with aid of Leo Spitzers “Genetic Stylistics”, justifying the use of certain rhetorical figures, so that we present in which moments and ways the poem can be similar to the myth and Epic and how these configurations express the native poets fight for the poetry in the Amazon Literature.