A reconstrução histórica da cabanagem em “Lealdade” e da guerra civil moçambicana em “As Duas sombras do rio”

Abstract

In this thesis, we aim at comparatively analyzing the historical reconstruction of Cabanagem and the Mozambican Civil War in the novels Lealdade (1997), by Márcio Souza and As duas sombras do rio (2003), by João Paulo Borges Coelho. In order to do so, we present a brief historical background of Brazilian and Mozambican colonization, as well as, the periods of independence and post-independence, besides the theoretical route on historical novels, resistance, memory, and the theory of space, in this case, the river , which we use as an analytical tool. In the work of Borges Coelho, the analysis was made from the crossing of the characters by rivers that were triggered by the arrival of civil war. We focus our reading in Leonidas Ntsato, a character that metaphorizes Mozambique divided in two by civil war and we highlight the role of the narrator in this novel. In the narrative of Márcio de Souza we follow the trips of Fernando, the narrator of the novel, which has its biography interconnected with events that would trigger the Cabanagem, years later. Each one at his own style, the two novelists revisit the hardships of the two wars that have as a scenery Northern Brazil and Mozambique which are peripheral spaces since colonial times.