UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Divergent Metaphors: The Intertextuality between Guimarães Rosa and Mia Couto Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2rs5x9ck Author Zunguze, Jeremias Alberto Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Divergent Metaphors: The Intertextuality between Guimarães Rosa and Mia Couto By Jeremias Alberto Zunguze A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Candace Slater, Chair Professor Estelle Tarica Professor Jeroen Dewulf Fall 2014 Divergent Metaphors: The Intertextuality between Guimarães Rosa and Mia Couto Copyright © 2014 by Jeremias Alberto Zunguze Abstract Divergent Metaphors: The Intertextuality between Guimarães Rosa and Mia Couto By Jeremias Alberto Zunguze Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professor Candace Slater, Chair Examining intersections and divergences between the often-compared Brazilian modernist João Guimarães Rosa and the Mozambican postmodernist Mia Couto, I propose an intertextual reading to broaden the perspective on their linguistic and thematic likenesses and subjective and cosmovisional differences. This study traces the trajectories of their orality and representation of the marginalized, especially children, from the point of view of race and identity. My research covers approximately two decades of work by each author, including Couto’s Jesusalém (2009), Estórias abensonhadas (1994), Cronicando (1991), and Vozes anoitecidas (1987) alongside Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956), Primeiras estórias (1962), Corpo de baile (1956), and Sagarana (1984). I find that contradictions in Rosean portrayals of mestiço-white versus Afro-Brazilian children reveal hierarchically racialized attitudes in Brazil’s social foundations that are at odds with the postcolonial values of Couto’s Mozambique. The legacy of Portuguese colonialism evident in the polarizing orality expressed by Rosean backlanders—whose narrations categorically render blacks as caricatured, dehumanized, and tragic in juxtaposition to the mestiços’ embodiment of the full range of human experience and transformative individual potential—functions as a discursive strategy to challenge Gilberto Freyre’s dominant racial discourses on Lusotropicalism, mestiçagem, and racial democracy. Conversely, Couto’s narrations on the black experience are free of the racial stereotype, unindividuated uniformity, and tragedized foreclosure of patriarchal characterization, despite also exploring the violence and poverty left in the wake of imperialism. Like Rosa’s more privileged mestiço-white children, capable of positive transformation no matter how marginalized their circumstances, Couto’s children—rich or poor, orphaned or parented, black or mestiço—capitalize on the imaginative and sometimes magical “exercises of childhood,” often while reconnecting to the indigenous and sacred practices of their ancestors. Unlike Rosa’s most heroic children, Couto’s do not usually dramatically improve in socio- economic conditions. Instead of the more linear worldview of scrappy self-determination or meritorious individualism that earn Rosean protagonists upward mobility, the Coutian protagonist follows a more circular pattern of self-discovery grounded in collective interdependence and a plurality of native traditions. 1 For Heather and Betinho For my parents, Alcina and Alberto For the Zunguze family For the Mothershead family i Table of Contents Introduction iv Chapter I Problems of Influence, Heritage, and Kinship 1 Chapter II Restaging the Big House: Orality and the Double Symbolization of Children in Guimarães Rosa 24 Chapter III Staging the Present, Making it Equal: Indigenous Oral Traditions and the Representation of Children in Mia Couto 54 Conclusion 83 Bibliography 89 ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my dissertation committee—Professors Candace Slater, Estelle Tarica, and Jeroen Dewulf—for sharing their invaluable time and providing me with their insightful feedback. I appreciate Professor Slater for supporting my education and academic interests since my undergraduate studies, for her seminars on violence in Brazilian civilization— which, undoubtedly, inspired my topic—and for challenging me to strive for further excellence. I also thank Professor Tarica for stimulating my intellectual views and reassuring the first steps of my dissertation. I extend my gratitude to Professor Dewulf as well for also seeing the potential of my doctoral thesis and for his friendly approach. There are other professors who also shaped my intellectual and creative paths. I am grateful for Professor José Luiz Passos, for his seminars on Luso-Brazilian literature and culture, for teaching me how to approach literature, and for awakening the potential of my creativity; Professor Natalia Brizuela, for her insightful seminars on criticism and literary theory; Professor Milton Azevedo, for his professional advise, for revealing to me the power of sociolinguistics, and for his great sense of humor; and Professor Julio Ramos, for his inspiring lectures on Caribbean and Latin American literatures and cultures. I want to extend my gratitude to all of the faculty members of the Spanish and Portuguese Department for their assistance, knowledge, and example. In addition, I want to acknowledge Professor Inocência Mata, from the University of Lisbon, for her profound intellectual insights on African literatures in Portuguese language. Since the embryonic stage and development of this dissertation, I have had the honor to have instructive conversations and seminar sessions with brilliant friends and colleagues from various disciplines at UC Berkeley who contributed to my intellectual growth. I wish to thank Deolinda Adão for her friendship, guidance, and support in my personal, academic, and professional life. I would also like to thank Cesar Melo, Adam Shellhorse, Mirian Lee, Maria Cantú-Ramaciotti, Brenno Kenji Kaneyasu, León Salvatierra, Miguel Angel Pillado, Javier Huerta, Juliana Martínez, Gustavo Buenrostro, Silvia López, Julia Cheng, Natalia Valencia, Katrina Dodson, Karina Palau, Kevin Gordon, and Tiago Castela for sharing their bright ideas with me and whose perseverance motivated me to finish this project. I would, also, like to thank the wonderful staff in the Spanish and Portuguese Department as well as the German Department: Verónica López, Mari Mordicai, Cathie Jones, Myriam Cotton, and Nadia Samadi for all of their support. Finally, without the moral, financial, and academic support of my family, I would have never accomplished this project. I dedicate this dissertation to my wife and editor, Heather Mothershead Zunguze, and my son, Alberto John Zunguze, for their incommensurable cheer, love, and patience. I also dedicate this work to my parents, Alberto Naiene Zunguze and Alcina Calige Chirrinze; my brothers and sisters (José, Jorge, Arone, Flórida, Ana, Gilda, and Evelina); and the Mothershead and Gaudette families (Donald, Rosemarie, and John as well as Grant, Crystal, Elizabeth, and Abigail) for their boundless faith, hope, and love throughout this adventure. Speaking of adventures, I cannot forget the generosity and hospitality of Brazilian friends—including Milena, Isadora, Henrique, Tia Amélia and the Rebelo family, Adriana, Paulo—and especially Silvestre and Irmã Ana de Fátima, who guided Betinho, Heather, and me through the veredas to Cordisburgo. iii Introduction . all the differences of a society might be reduced to a single form, to the organization of a world-view, to the establishment of a system of values, to a coherent type of civilization. Foucault The current economic, cultural, and political relationship between Brazil and African nations of Portuguese official language sparks interest in comparative literary studies. Historically, a one-way cultural circulation in the area of literature precedes this contemporary relationship. The spread of Brazilian literary artifacts among African intellectuals in the former African Portuguese colonies can be traced back to the 1950s (Chabal, Vozes Moçambicanas 30- 32), especially the literature produced by modernistas. African poets in the Portuguese language, such as Agostinho Neto and José Craveirinha, do acknowledge reading such Brazilian Regionalist authors as Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, and Raquel de Queiroz, to name a few (Laban 83). The contemporary Mozambican writer, Mia Couto also points to the Brazilian late modernist author, João Guimarães Rosa—who wrote between the mid-1930s and mid-1960s— as a significant literary model. In Couto’s own words, “Guimarães foi uma iluminação para mim, uma descoberta importantíssima” (Salem et al). The pioneering scholarship on this transatlantic literary circulation and transaction tends to come almost exclusively from this perspective of “influence” (Daniel, “Mia Couto” 3; Matos 136-137; Cláudida da Silva and Ramos Ventura 221-284; Nenevé and Siepamann), attempting to trace how the literary conventions of Brazilian authors have transferred to the works of Mozambican writers. Comparative studies of Mia Couto and Guimarães Rosa tend to follow this cause-effect reading paradigm with a specific focus on pointing out the Brazilian author’s