Homoafetividade na infância na narrativa literária brasileira

Abstract

The Brazilian production of homoaffective themes/issues in literature evolved significantly both in quantitative and qualitative terms throughout the twentieth century. Still, the approach to the subject involving characters in childhood and / or pre – adolescence is quite scarce in Brazilian literary creation. Based on a survey of what has been written in Brazilian literature regarding homoaffective relations in childhood addressed in the texts directly or in a subtle way, from the publication of O Ateneu (The Athenaeum), by Raul Pompeia, in 1888, four narratives were selected, through which we analyze how literary child characters face homoaffective desire: O Ateneu; Capitães da areia (Captains of the sands) (1937) by Jorge Amado, Dona Sinhá e o filho padre (Mother and son) (1964), by Gilberto Freyre, and Limite branco (White boundary) (1970), by Caio Fernando Abreu. We analyzed the representations of power arising from contexts in which the child has engaged in this kind of relationship, the interactions between the characters, adults and children, in relation to the given context (family, school, church, street) and the literary language used by the authors. To complement this analysis, we dealt with the concepts of childhood, sexuality, homosexuality, power (according to Michel Foucault), based on the theoretical background and apparatus of the literary characters.