The narrator of Em câmara lenta, by Renato Tapajós

• Main Author: Pinto Junior, Jayme Alberto da Costa
• Publication Date: 2008
• Format: Article
• Language: por
• Source: Literatura e Autoritarismo
• Download full: http://periodicos.ufsm.br/LA/article/view/74312
• topic: Authoritarianism; Torture; Narrator; Narrative; Autoritarismo; Tortura; Narrativa; Narrador

This paper seeks to analyze the novel Em Câmara Lenta, written by Renato Tapajós in 1977, focusing on formal aspects of the text. More specifically, our interest lies in how the narrator is constructed and presented by the author, with the ultimate aim of establishing links between the form Tapajós elected and the social-political moment the country was going through at the time, as circunscribed in the book (between 1968 and 1973). As we look at the text vis-à-vis the context, we will try to reveal literary qualities that would allow Em Câmara Lenta to stand out in the wide spectrum of the so-called “engaged” novels – written in the wake of the 1964 Revolution and throughout the two decades that followed, and that resorted to various aesthetic options to depict the repressive conditions which characterized that period. The “road to literary value” which we expect Em Câmara Lenta to cover cannot be limited to this single paper; the contribution presented here, if any, is therefore to be seen as a first step in that direction.