Interpretações da multifacetada manifestação religiosa riobaldiana

Abstract

The present thesis aims to investigate the many religious manifestations shown by the character-narrator Riobaldo, as well as his “unusual” religious views, in the novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, by João Guimarães Rosa. The research focuses on a psycho-religious analysis of the protagonist’s lines and of some symbolic episodes of the narrative. The investigations intend to comprehend the doubts and unrests that are always in this subject’s thoughts, considering the universal representative of the “human man”. The psychoanalytical theoretical grounds of Freud, Lacan, Ana-Maria Rizzuto as well as some of their followers support the narrator’s therapeutical practice of narrating his life. Already as an elderly and resting in his hammock, he needs to talk as a way of understanding himself, overcoming his difficulties and “crossing the ghosts” of his existence. His religious views, just like his psyche, and the forms of understanding the world have many sides, which no religion can fully satisfy. But it is through love and prayer that he tries to comprehend reality, for he considers religion as a “thing of the heart”, and his lonely and powerless condition is what makes him believe in God.