The distorting prism of the carnavelesque in O Concerto dos Flamengos by Agustina Bessa-Luís, A Casa da Cabeça de Cavalo by Teolinda Gersão and Lillias Fraser by Hélia Correia

Abstract

In Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin presents the carnival, from which he detaches some of the categories, including laughter, polyphony, grotesque or parody as one of the roots of the novel. At the heart of this process of incorporation of the carnival by the novel is a series of binary oppositions that distinguish a formal and serious world from an unofficial and carnivalesque world in which the reversal of values occurs. Carnavalesque thus makes figures of ambivalence its specificity and thus prevents any norm from settling down, any form of fixing itself, in a view contrary to the classical perception of literature where norm and form are guarantors of beauty Artwork. In the novels of our study, Agustina Bessa-Luís' O Concerto dos Flamengos, A Casa da Cabeça de Cavalo by Teolinda Gersão and Lillias Fraser by Hélia Correia3, the principles of referentiality and the effect of reality are then modulated by the prism Of the carnavalesque which causes their deformation: deformation of the character, distortion of the world of the work and deformation of the language.