THE ARCHAIC ORDER OF FARMING: A READING OF THE DYNAMICS BETWEEN THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE IN LAVOURA ARCAICA
Lavoura Arcaica; sacred and profane; carnivalization; transgression; authoritative discourse
The novel Lavoura Arcaica, written by Raduan Nassar, tells the story of the character André who returns to the family after running away from home and spending some time away. The work presents his conflicted relationship with his family, especially his father, with whom André maintains a complex ideological tension. In his approach to the novel as a literary genre, Mikhail Bakhtin presents some of its characteristics, among which, we can point out: the diversity of languages. We mainly propose to identify among these languages the voices and values that act in the narrative and how they influence the formation of the character between the sacred and the profane. We present some methodological notes placing the literature in dialogue with culture, in addition to the Bakhtinian concept of heterodiscourse. Following, we present an analysis of the novel in which we seek both the presence of different voices and languages and the dialogical tension between them in the sacred-profane spectrum. Throughout the research, it was possible to observe that the formation of the character takes place among the tension of the values, under the order of an authoritative sacred discourse and a profane attempt of positioning oneself in the dialog. We also have the occurrence of different social voices and values - as, for example, in the dialogues between André and his family; or even in the conflict between values like the sacred and the profane. We conclude that the relationship between André and his father is presented in order to build an authoritative discourse and the novel reveals itself to be a metaphor for a return to the sacred.