"No roldão das horas e do vento": o tempo em A ostra e o vento, de Moacir Costa Lopes

Abstract

Moacir Costa Lopes started his literary career in 1959 with the novel Maria de cada porto, which explores, in depth, the theme of the sea at a time when it was not commonly written about. He was well received by the critics of the time, who praised him for this innovative aspect of his work as well as for the different ways the category of time was used in his narrative. His concern with the theme of time is shown relevant in Lopes‘s oeuvre, and the experimental use of this element can be pointed out as his aesthetic mark of fiction production. He manipulated it in different ways, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout his novels. Only in 1964, when Lopes wrote his fourth novel, titled A ostra e o vento, was time used as a central element in the narrative, being inventively explored in its structural and thematic planes. This thesis aims to analyze time in the novel A ostra e o vento in terms of the structural configuration of the narrative as well as in the relation it is established between time and the fantastic, aspects of great relevance to the selected corpus. The analysis is theoretically based on studies by Gérad Genette (1979), Benedito Nunes (1988) and A. A. Mendilow (1972) on time in narratives, as well as Tzvetan Todorov (2008) and Remo Ceserani (2006) on the fantastic in literature, among others authors. The research results point to the indispensability of the temporal configuration to the work‘s production of meanings, since it interferes in the composition of the other structuring elements of the narrative, such as plot, character, space and point of view, and of the fantastic atmosphere that characterizes the novel. Moreover, it prompts reflections on the concept of time.