Grande sertão: veredas em quadrinhos: a transposição intermidiática de personagens literárias para o romance gráfico

Abstract

This research investigates the aesthetic procedures involved in the adaptation of the novel Grande sertão: veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) by João Guimarães Rosa (2017) into the homonymous graphic novel by Eloar Guazzelli Filho and Rodrigo Rosa (2021). Since its first publication in 1956, Rosa’s novel (2017) has been the object of extensive critical reception and numerous academic studies. It has also been adapted into multiple media formats, including film, theater, and comics, among others. The graphic novel Grande sertão: veredas, scripted by Eloar Guazzelli Filho and illustrated by Rodrigo Rosa was published in 2014, nearly sixty years after the first edition of Rosa’s novel. There are still few studies, however, that have selected this adaptation as their corpus, unlike what occurred with Rosa’s novel. Aiming to fill this and other gaps, the present study employs bibliographic research and qualitative analysis to examine how the narrator-character Riobaldo and the literary characters Diadorim, Hermógenes, and Ricardão were transposed into the comics medium. To this end, the study draws, among others, on Forster (2005 [1927]), Candido (1974), Moisés (2013), Wood (2017), and Reis (2018) regarding the novelistic character; on Benjamin (1987) concerning the narrator; on Clüver (2006; 2011), Wolf (2011), Rajewsky (2012; 2020), and Groensteen (2020) regarding intermediality; on Stam (2008 [2004]) and Hutcheon (2013 [2006]) concerning adaptation; and on Eisner (2001 [1985]), McCloud (1995), and Groensteen (2015) regarding the language of comics. The analysis undertaken found that the graphic novel Grande sertão: veredas performs an excision (Genette, 2010 [1982]), that is, it suppresses passages and reorganizes Rosa’s narrative, prioritizing central episodes in Riobaldo’s trajectory. In addition, the work explores visual resources to transpose the backlands, the narrator, and the characters, making it possible to state that Riobaldo, Diadorim, Hermógenes, and Ricardão present characterizations similar to those provided by Rosa’s narrator, with adaptations to the new medium.