Hibisco Roxo, de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: um Bildungsroman Ex-cêntrico

Abstract

This research’s starting point is the analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, based on the Bildungsroman (formation novel) paradigm, however, there are also aspects that transcend this romance subgenre. In order to contemplate the trajectory that consists the research problem, this work is structured under four different sections. The first one contains the introduction, in which the central hypothesis of the research is presented: the assumption that it is possible to conceive a Bildungsroman transgressive characterization, identified after reading the novel and dialoging with its critical breadth. The second section relies on the studies regarding Bildung and Bildungsroman in order to revisit the history of both categories and their original mainly characteristics as well as the changes on the literary model throughout time. In the third section, the literary model transgressions are presented and evidenced in the contemporary reception of the paradigm, especially due to the concept of ex-centricity as it is proposed by Linda Hutchoen in Poetics of Post Modernity and might be identified in Chimamanda’s work. The fourth section recaptures the classical Bildungsroman principles, this time, applied to the analysis of Purple Hibiscus, aiming to analyze the Bildung trajectory of the protagonist, looking to highlight the aspects that escape to the classical paradigm of Bildungsroman and also discuss if enlightenment and emancipation are categories capable of providing visibility to the transformation that the protagonist went through and, as a consequence, the paradigm went through as well, constituting the mainly attributions of that which will be called ex-centric Bildungsroman at the end of the study. To support the discussions presented in this study, apart from the elucidations about the relations of ex-centric literature and Linda Hutcheon’s poetics of postmodernity, this work is also based on the concepts developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, Cristina Ferreira Pinto e Wilma Maas regarding the origin and the trajectory of Bildungsroman; on the enlightenment and the consequent emancipation that is provided by this concept the fundaments consist on the works of Immanuel Kant and Theodor Adorno, respectively.