The italian immigration in Inferno provisório

Abstract

It is mainly in the narratives of Mamma, son tanto felice, once the first volume of the pentalogy Inferno provisório, that Luiz Ruffato focuses the relationship between the Italian immigrants and the social and natural reality of the Zona da Mata of Minas Gerais State to which they incorporated themselves during the first half of the twentieth century – considered here the chronological limits set by the book. From 2016 on, Inferno provisório became a single volume and Mamma son tanto felice ceased to be an independent unity: its narratives were distributed by the author alongside the new volume. Using narrative techniques that favor fragmentation, selective focus and discursive heterogeneity, Ruffato enacts what he called “a tragedy.” The purpose of this paper is to disclose the results of the analysis of this novel in search of the interpretation of the historical phenomenon of immigration, not only considering the implied points-of-view or statements disposed throughout the narrative, but also taking into account those resulting from the effects of meaning obtained by the use of specific forms of narrating and the relationship they establish with the contents exposed.