The The Gothic in Coelho Neto's regionalism: a form of representation and understanding

Abstract

With a new edition of Esfinge (Legatus), and with two short stories present in the Gothic collection Medo imortal (Darkside), Coelho Neto has been recognized as one of the precursors of Brazilian Gothic. The style is present not only in his urban fiction; even his classic Sertão can be seen as not only as regionalist, but also Gothic: there is tales with a living dead ("Praga"), a supposed witch ("O enterro"), a family reaching its end ("A tapera"), ghosts ("Mandoví") and necrophilia ("Os velhos"), characteristic of Gothic literature. Undead are also present in "Assombramento" and "Segundas núpcias", from the book Treva. We will analyze some of these tales where horror is used to portray the cathartic end of relationships — children, wives, husbands who are in dysfunctional relationships; when they believe they have escaped from them, they find themselves with some supernatural being —. We will also seek to understand how the author's religious principles may have guided his fantastic creations. We will use, as a theoretical basis, the works Gothic, by Fred Botting, and Gothic histories, by Clive Bloom, showing Coelho Neto as a writer of the Brazilian rural Gothic.