A narrativa sem ponteiros: o tempo na ficção romanesca de Moacir Costa Lopes

Abstract

The presence of the sea in Moacir Costa Lopes' narrative fiction led Jorge Amado to call him, in the introductory text of a Maria de cada porto’s edition, Romancista do Mar, a nickname by which Lopes remains known to this day among his readers and scholars of his work. However, another title could be attributed to the writer with equal justice – especially due to the importance that the element that names its assumes in the fiction produced by him: Romancista do Tempo. This is due to the fact that Lopes – who revealed himself to be fascinated by time – explored it in a broad and diverse way in his narratives, both in terms of form and content. In this sense, this study aims to analyze the temporal configuration in the author's novelistic fiction and the importance it assumes for the construction of its meanings. Thus, we studied the representation of time in two of his novels – Maria de cada porto (1959) and Belona, latitude noite (1968) –, paying attention to: a) the way in which it presents itself structurally configured in each of these works and b) the how the experience of time, in its relationship with memory and death, integrates the universe represented in the narratives analyzed. Our considerations were guided by the postulates of scholars of narrative temporality and related themes, such as those of Genette (2017), Guida (2013), Mendilow (1972), Meyerhoff (1976), Nunes (1988), Ricoeur (2010) and others.